


A tamer of wolves tames no foxes

by prettylittlegoat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, D/s themes, Deaf Clint Barton, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-10 11:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11126124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettylittlegoat/pseuds/prettylittlegoat
Summary: Clint will always insist he’s no genius, so it’s probably a good thing that it doesn’t take brilliance to see that Bucky is suffering under all that ice and iron around his heart. Someone once held Clint’s hand when he clawed his way to forgiveness for being brainwashed, and Clint figures that Bucky’s had it a hell of a lot harder and could probably use support that he ain’t getting from Steve.[mild D/s themes (non-negotiated bdsm, essentially), dealings with past trauma and abuse, panic attacks. not too graphic, mainly emotional realization and ‘no one get’s it but you’ ideas.]





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is and has been and will likely continue to be A Process, but i'm so glad to finally be publishing it and entering into this fandom. title is from the poem 'dirt being dirt' by carl phillips, which is one i highly suggest. such thanks to charlie for being not only a great friend and sounding board, but also for being a really excellent beta and dealing with me speaking of nothing but this fic for, like, a month. also thanks to my other friends who are, tragically, not into avengers, but tolerate me to saintly extents.  
> as the fic progresses, the rating, tags, and characters will change. expect updates once a week and a total of seven chapters, organized as five acts with two short intermissions. thank you for reading!  
> EDIT: (21 june 17) i've taken some creative liberties in combing the cinematic universe with the comics. i've also completely made some shit up. so, in this universe, phil lives thru loki's attack, clint has 30% hearing in one ear and 60% in the other (this won't be a central theme or anything; although i've experienced hearing issues, i'm not deaf and i can't write to those experiences), bucky has shown up and doesn't decide to be frozen until his triggers can be deprogrammed, and natasha is... sort of supersoldier. a little. they all live in the tower like a big happy family and it's great. please ask any questions you may have; i was a lil lazy on worldbuilding.

## Act I Scene I

Clint finds Bucky’s despair by accident the first time. Or, mostly by accident; he does have a sort of bitter curiosity, but he isn’t looking. Not really. After the helicarrier, after _Loki_ , may his bones be rent to fucking dust, Clint doesn't scent and seek out trouble like he used to. He keeps to himself in the tower, mostly, with Natasha’s occasional and quietly lethal presence at his elbow as a sort of reprieve from his self-instituted isolation. Even staying in the tower, he keeps himself mainly to dim halls and empty suites. On bad days, he climbs up into the ductwork and loses himself in the towers labyrinthine gut, or shoots until his arms tremble with the effort and he feels like he’ll puke from exhaustion. He doesn’t seek out company: he doesn’t deserve to see his teammates and have them treat him like he didn’t go full there-is-no-Dana and neatly flip their lives right into hell.

Clint doesn’t have any real interest in knowing his team. He let Stark sell him a suite in the tower, and that’s enough team building for him. So, for all that wants to know if Bucky experiences the sort of post-brainwash guilt and paranoia, and for all that he’s curious if Bucky is actually sleeping with Steve like Twitter wants to believe, he doesn’t approach the ex-Soviet assassin on purpose. Besides, he has his own ex-Soviet assassin; he doesn’t _really_ need to start a collection.

He doesn't mean to see the fear and weight in the draw of Bucky’s punch in the gym, doesn't mean to see the line of guilt tense in his spine like a worn rope as he pulls his punch and still bursts the bag, spilling sand. It’s the sort of bad day where Clint wants to wreck his body into exhaustion-forced sleep, but Bucky’s in the way. He whines in his head, upset for not asking JARVIS if the gym was occupied and about to leave, but once he's seen this side of Bucky like a ‘roided out toddler, he's drawn in sort of inexplicably.

“Hey, big guy,” Clint says cautiously. The last thing he wants is to spook 270 pounds of murder, nails and bullets and coiled muscle wrapped up in skin. Clint very consciously keeps his hands, all relaxed bones and knuckles, non-threatening by his side. “You good?”

Bucky turns to him, his eyes half-lidded behind the damp curtain of his hair. It almost makes him look sleepy, but Clint knows better. By the tense swing of his arms and the half inch between his heels and the ground where he balances, springy, on the balls of his feet, Clint knows better—by the way Bucky’s voice sounds like cast iron when he grates out, “Peachy,” Clint knows better.

“Uh huh,” says Clint.

“Just, uh, steam. Blowing off steam.”

Clint says nothing, leaving his expression carefully bland. Bucky looks vaguely uncomfortable, and he turns away from the ruined bag to face Clint, shifting his balance every time Clint moves. When Clint carefully sidesteps and Bucky mirrors, he notes with surprise that this, the Winter fucking Soldier, jolts at the crunch of sand beneath him, like he'd forgotten where he was and how he’d just destroyed a heavy bag. Clint relaxes, sliding his duffel onto the floor with the knowledge that Bucky won't—maybe can't, and that makes him wonder—hit him.

“So are you angry?” Clint continues, stepping forward. _“Guilty?”_ When Bucky barks a small unkind laugh: “Guilty, then. Why?” and Clint knows this isn't a good idea. There's no good that can come of him poking Bucky, no good that can come of him trying to play therapist, but he's _seen_ that guilt and discomfort before, when its name was Loki and it whispered _you have heart_. It had looked at him in the mirror with glowing blue eyes and damn near shredded him from the inside out; no one deserves that, not really, not even a near-century old night terror. Besides, he’s feeling rough enough that his instincts of self-preservation are gone, vacationing in Toga or Quito or wherever.

“Killed. I’ve killed,” says Bucky. “Lot of people.”

“Yeah? I know that song and dance.”

Bucky's eyes narrow further, and he snaps a little huff of air out. “You don't—”

Clint steps closer, grabs his shoulder where it's cool, sweat-damp metal and makes eye contact that, he knows, burns Bucky down to his core. “I _know_ that song and dance _._ I've been used like a fucking tool. I want you to say I'm guilty, deserve punishment, deserve to hurt. Say it. _Say it._ ”

Bucky’s lip curls up in a horrible snarl, animal from head to toe. It’s sort of terrifying, but Clint doesn’t back off. He keeps his hand right where it is and doesn’t blink a bit, until Bucky breaks the eye contact finally. Bucky smacks Clint’s hand off his shoulder and mutters something that Clint can’t catch, even with his aids.

“What was that?”

“I said, don’t touch me,” Bucky growls. Clint grins at him, slow and carefully hiding his fear. He can hear that there’s some condition to the statement, that there’s something in him that wants to be touched. That makes sense—Clint didn’t know all the gory details of his programming, but he knew enough to understand it was very much a _bad touch_ environment.

They stand there like that for a few minutes. Bucky’s breathing calms, Clint’s grin fades. Eventually, the Winter Soldier sidesteps him and strides briskly towards the double doors, unwrapping the tape on his right hand as he walks. Clint watches him go, doesn't give chase, but hollers after, “Come find me when it's too bad. I know it, I know guilt.”

Clint shoots until the still targets dance before his eyes.

 

## Act I Scene II

The second time Clint finds Bucky's despair, it's on purpose. That flighty, bright look shone in Bucky's eyes at dinner, the sweat a half-dried sheen on his forehead. Clint knows the ways his eyes move—casing the room, looking at weak spots, finding reflective surfaces to get at his six—because he used to do it constantly, too. Bucky’s flesh hand visibly trembles; just once, but for a sniper, that's _everything_ and Clint notices. Bucky knows he sees it and spends the rest of the meal with his hand tucked firmly in his lap, but he gives Clint a horrible pleading stare before ducking into the elevator.

Clint follows directions real well, and he follows after a few minutes.

He finds Bucky in the gym again, this time on the shooting range with no hearing protection. That makes Clint a little bitter, wishing he had the luxury of serum healing for his ears, but he. His form was fucking atrocious, all loose limbs and half-lidded eyes like the gun was boring him to death. The target on the other end isn’t much, at this point. Some handfuls of barely-there confetti clipped to the line, really. Clint turns his hearing aids down, not bothering with the provided headphones hanging on a rack by the range—none of the shooters on the team use them, really, but Tony keeps them there, which is nice.

“Every single one,” Bucky’s muffled voice says.

Clint barely catches his words, but gathers himself once he puzzles them out. “Do you—you remember?”

“Every single—” two shots. “ _goddamn_ one. Children, Barton.” Bucky’s metal arm is eerily still, barely kicking for recoil, for all of the panting and shaking that the rest of him seems to be doing. He’s not a lefty, Clint knows, but he seems more or less ambidextrous with shooting. With the tremble of him, it’s not surprising to Clint that Bucky’s shooting with the metal limb .

“You can't hear forgiveness if you blow your idiot ears, Barnes.” Bucky turns at that, lowering the gun to waist level. Clint can see the horrible tremble in his flesh arm better now, but that sleek beastly thing holding the gun is still and glistening. He looks just like a fucking junkie, holding a gun with no bullets and begging for smack, except he looks not at all like a junkie because his firing hand doesn’t shake and there are damn well bullets in that gun. His face is all torn and scrunched like bent metal, and Clint almost asks if he misses the lack of control, but catches himself in time. “Did you ask for it?” Clint asks instead.

“For—for _forgiveness?_ No.” His arm suddenly comes up again, and he fires off another shot, not even looking to see if it hit. Clint doesn’t look either, doesn’t need to. It hit. “No, because it's too late when their eyes are already foggin’ and you smell like corpse and the exfil is there.”

Trying to keep his eyes trained on Bucky, and sort of failing, Clint says, “Ask.”

Bucky looks so lost beneath the barely-handled rage and confusion painting his face, but Clint sees the little bright bit inside him that wants to ask for forgiveness. Clint sees it when he licks his lip, when his brows furrow together and his gun comes the rest of the way down. That bright part inside him retreats again under that cloud cover of suspicion that he carries before he speaks again. “Steve says I didn't do anything wrong,” he finally says, cautiously. “Is asking an admission?”

Clint barks a laugh. “ _Do I have the right to remain silent?_ ” he parrots. “This isn't court, Barnes. You already feel that guilt inside you, and it's eating you right up, and that’s enough. You really gonna let it tear you up like this?”

The look on Bucky's face is story enough: suffering in silence is the most elegant and simple punishment, affords him the most pain and shows to the team the least. Clint gives a little sigh but keeps his expression reined in, and steps forward, crowding Bucky up against the wall of the lane. He expects Bucky to shove him away, and his hands do come up, but there’s no pressure when they grip Clint’s forearms. Up close, Bucky’s breath is a little sour from a post-dinner beer that Clint knows damn well did nothing, and he's clammy where Clint puts a questioning hand about his throat, the other coming to the machine-flesh fault.

“Don’t,” Bucky says, then stops, and Clint can see in the way he hesitates hints of the young kid he once was. The cloudy confusion still shows plainly on  Bucky’s face, eyebrows tilting up. There’s a question there, but he can’t seem to ask it, so Clint keeps his hand where it is. When Clint tightens his fingers, Bucky still says nothing, even if his jaw clenches and a metal finger clicks against the grip of the gun. Clint considers telling him to set it down, but he knows he won’t listen. Besides, it seems like an unnecessary demand for cessation of control when Clint is already asking so much, and maybe it’s better this way, with Bucky holding onto what little power he can with another man’s hand around his throat.

“If you need to stop, say _Hawkeye._ I won’t listen to no or stop,” he whispers; then he straightens up, pulling in that musky Bucky-smell, cold sweat and pine woods and clove cigarettes . Bucky had picked up smoking again, Clint knew, because Cap had looked so surprised when Bucky had declined a cigarette, saying he didn’t smoke. Bucky always got this horrible guilty air about him when he had no memory of doing something during the youth that he’d supposedly shared with the Captain that he’d immediately start doing that something. That night, Clint had watched from a hidden perch of his as Bucky chainsmoked a pack of clove cigs—the Winter Soldier, the goddamn _Winter Soldier,_ a hipster; who would have thought? He was all confusion and muscle memory as he smoked, like he knew just what he was doing but couldn’t remember the genesis of that knowing. It was, Clint supposed, _exactly_ what it looked like.

Now, Bucky's pulse is a hummingbird beneath his thumb, and when Clint speaks next, his voice is so strong that he knows it echoes through the range even with his aids turned way down. “How many, Barnes?” Clint says. “How many did you kill?”

“There were 159 targets,” Bucky says, his voice blank and desperate at once, and Clint narrows his eyes. Those words are a blatant lie by omission, no games. His fingers are digging into Bucky's shoulder seam and his throat at once, but if Bucky notices, he doesn’t react.

“How many did you _kill?_ ” Clint repeats.

Bucky repeats what he said initially, looking Clint in the eyes in the most dishonest way, bright with desperation. Those words are practically _begging_ Clint to react, and so. And so. Without thinking too much, Clint’s right hand releases his shoulder and is open and flat and flying through the air, and it connects with Bucky’s cheek with an alarming noise.

Clint’s surprised he can hear it with the aids turned so far down, but by the look on Bucky’s face, it was one fucker of a slap. Clint swallows, hopes Bucky doesn’t notice, because his mind is going bugfuck as he lowers his hand. He’s about to give up this whole charade they’ve got going on and apologize for going too far when Bucky mutters something indistinct. Clint’s stomach does something crazy, and he wonders if maybe this is going to work.

Clint says, “What?” and reaches up to turn the volume on his aids back to a normal level before settling his hand back down on Bucky’s shoulder.

“350,” replies Bucky, his head still turned sideways from that one time when Clint actually slapped _the_ Winter Soldier. Bucky’s face, where Clint’s hand connected—where he _slapped the goddamn Winter Soldier, holy shit—_ is pinking up rapidly in the perfect relief of his hand. They’re so in one another’s space that Clint can see the short rasp of day-old hair above Bucky’s lip and the shining bead of sweat in the dip of his temple. “350 even,” Bucky says again, searching Clint’s face for any sign of judgement or scorn. Clint very carefully keeps his face schooled; no judgement, no scorn.

Then, before Clint knows it, he’s pulling Bucky into a crushing embrace, his cheek pressed against Bucky’s metal shoulder. It's, frankly, kind of awkward—like hugging a warm, damp rock or a tree. Bucky doesn't say anything to match how his muscles twitch and jump at the contact, and Clint takes that as a good sign.

“I forgive you,” Clint breathes, Bucky’s metal hand drops the gun, letting it fall with a clatter on the gym floor. Clint glances down at the gun as it hits the floor, willing himself not to jump even though he knows damn well Tony would never have a gun in his range so sensitive as to fire when dropped. On its grip, there are little half-moon dents where Bucky’s fingers held it, and Clint is suddenly that much more grateful that he so meekly accepted being slapped—if Bucky had grabbed his wrist in defence, it wouldn’t have dented so much as crumpled, or perhaps exploded. Sometime when he’s thinking, Clint feels Bucky begin to shudder in his arms.

They stand there like that for awhile with Bucky all folded into Clint's arms like it's where he belongs, shaking to pieces. Clint wonders absently if Bucky will ever show Steve this side of him, this vulnerable and aching part. He thinks not: Steve would never grant him forgiveness, would only tell him he did nothing wrong, and Bucky would never believe him. It would be pointless.

Eventually, Clint pulls away, presses his fingers back against that man-machine seam; he can feel the knotted scar tissue where the metal has scraped skin away countless times, and that’s where he presses the hardest, knowing it’s tender.

He begins with, “The first one. Tell me how.”

Bucky swallows, says nothing until Clint begins to dig his fingers in and press blunt nails into tender flesh and Bucky bites off a sharp gasp. His guard is down, now—really, who knew that one good slap the face was all it took to take a Brooklyn good ol’ boy-cum-Soviet supersoldier robocop apart? Clint presses down again, wedging his fingers between flesh and steel, and Barnes just. Takes it. His muscles are rhythmically clenching and relaxing. Clint can’t even begin to imagine what sort of pain he’s dishing out here, but that’s not his job.

Bucky says at last, “I shot him. HYDRA dissenter. Shot him, two children. 1945, and I wasn’t trained yet, not well, and I hurt him so fucking bad. I didn’t take the headshot.” He’s gasping now, his whole body trembling and the sheen of sweat fresh and cool. Still, he takes it. “Four shots in total. Two to the torso, and abdomen, destroying organs, two to the left leg, partially severing the femoral artery. He bled out, slowly.” He might be gasping, but around that his voice is eerie-steady and even. He rattles the whole thing off like a fucking mission report, and Clint keeps his face calm with some effort. When Bucky’s mouth snaps shut, he then steels himself and forces those six feet of death and destruction down to its knees. Bucky could resist, if he wanted, but Clint knows he doesn’t want, knows he needs this cruel sort of inquisition.

“Stop talking,” Clint says, even though he has. “Are you sorry?” Blank eyes stare up at him, so Clint presses down and repeats himself. “ _Are you sorry?_ ”

When it comes, Bucky’s voice is small and soft—or at least, in comparison to the usual gruff sarcasm that he spouts on a daily basis. “Yes,” he says.

“Say it,” Clint says.

Bucky’s eyes flicker between Clint and the door to the outside. “I’m sorry,” he says tonelessly, then again with more feeling: “I’m sorry.”

And Clint pulls Bucky to him, bending at the knees to bury his face in his stomach. “I forgive you,” says Clint. “I forgive you.” Bucky’s hair is a little greasy beneath his fingertips, damp and smelling exactly of Bucky: gunsmoke and warm flesh and something like a pine forest. It’s not a great smell, but it’s not offensive, and it’s so _human_ that Clint finds himself breathing it in. Clint cards his fingers through Bucky’s hair gently, holds him, who is now still as a stone. Bucky doesn’t push Clint away.

They stay that way for a while; when Bucky leaves, it is without a word, soundlessly slipping into the elevator, leaving Clint standing stone-faced and curious in the middle of the shooting range, Bucky’s gun left discarded at his feet. If Bucky feels Clint’s eyes on his back as the elevator shuts around him, he says nothing. If Clint feels some idiot part of his heart twist and pine for Bucky's happiness, he doesn't think about it. He figures he's just doing his job, the same way Natasha did after he came down from Loki and was a juddering wreck. She'd let him tell her every name, every crime and had bruised him and pushed him and _hurt_ him for every one. She'd punished him and forgiven him, been his judge and jury, and it _saved_ him.

He wonders, for a second, if she had felt the need to press her lips to his or some eldritch coiling in her belly when he cried. He brushes it off, not willing to pursue that thought to any end, and leaves.

 

## Act I Scene III

The third and fourth times, it's about the same. Clint finds fascinating weak spots: choking, making him kneel on the cold and cutting gravel of the roof, that space where flesh and metal join. He forces confessions out of Bucky, and there's a little less ghost and a little more man in his eyes every time. They’re only ever together in the dead of night or the jarring quiet of isolation, away from their teammates with some effort. It’s startling, how hard it is to find privacy even in the never-ending suites and hallways of the tower.

The fifth time is different.

His phone is vibrating harshly in short pulses right next to his face, screen showing a note from JARVIS: ‘Agent Barton.’ it reads.

Clint is instantly wide awake, and not happy about it. “If you don't have a damn good reason for waking me, I’m going to pour ketchup all over your servers,” he mutters into the pillow, a little disoriented by not hearing his own voice.

The screen lights up again as he blinks owlishly at it. ‘I believe Mr. Barnes is having a nightmare.’ Clint hesitates, not certain if this is at all his place to intrude, and, as if psychic, JARVIS continues. ‘Mr. Barnes requested that I contact you in the event of a severe nightmare. He believed you could help.’

Clint groans, wishing he could punch Past Clint in the nose for ever getting tied up in the post-brainwashing stress disorder basket case of a Soviet assassin’s mental affairs, but he rolls lightly out of bed all the same to find pants. He finds an old pair of fleece ski pants—Natasha’s—that are starting to sort of disintegrate and tugs them on, grabbing his hearing aids on his way out the door. The elevator is quick, and he's barely got the aids in when the door opens with a pleasant ding. The ding doesn't really have half a chance, though; a horrible and grating and pained sound, guttural like rending metal and collapsing buildings, is jagged in the air, and Clint silently thanks the gods du jour that Tony had the sense to make the suits very effectively soundproof.

Bucky's a disaster when Clint gets to the bedroom. His back is arched off the bed and he's panting and sobbing and alternating screams with eerily calm repetitions of, “Birthname: Barnes, James B. Class: asset. Code name: Winter Soldier.”

Clint gets close enough that he can smell him: sweat and smoke this time, layered with blood. He hopes faintly that Bucky’s not injured too badly, and that Clint can fix him up and he'll heal before the others see anything. His hair is stuck to his face and tangled, and the muscles of his stomach are taut and show even through the shitty Captain America shirt he’s wearing, which under any other circumstances, Clint would find _hilarious._

“Barnes,” he whispers, to no reply. He says it a few more times, getting louder. There's no bit of him that wants to touch the man, and he's about to ask JARVIS to lift the lights when he has a thought. “Bucky. Uh, birthname: Barton, Clinton F. Class: agent, specialist. Code name: Hawkeye.”

He repeats himself after Bucky says his again, and they go back and forth repeating it until Bucky’s spine gradually uncurls until he lays flat against the bed. His blue eyes, puffy and red-rimmed, crack open at Clint, who reaches for his hand.

“Hey, Barnes. It's 2017. You're in Tony Stark’s tower, recently recovered from screaming your bloody head off.” Clint pauses briefly, but cuts Bucky off as he begins to open his mouth. “And speaking of blood, you smell like it. Can we, uh, or you, can you get to the bathroom?”

Bucky is silent, mouth open, and then he nods. Clint reaches for his other hand, forcing down the urge to recoil at the disgusting, sticky feeling of a night’s worth of sweat. They get Bucky to his feet, stumbling, and into the bathroom.

Clint helps him shower, and finds that it’s the meat of his shoulder up to his ear that reeks of blood. It’s beyond raw, and horrible, thick scratches crisscross up. He's gentle about cleaning it, spraying Bucky's cheek and letting the water run over the wounds, but even when the spray flashes over it directly, the man doesn't flinch.

After, Clint carefully asks, “Do you want to be alone?” and Bucky nods his head yes. Clint has already turned away and is about to leave when Bucky grabs his arm back.

His voice won't come at first, but he tries again. “Wait.” Clint waits, patiently, making dutiful eye contact. “Stay?”

Clint nods, steps back to Bucky, who’s wide awake; the tremble in his flesh arm has calmed, and his eyes hold Clint's steadily. Clint carefully doesn’t point out Bucky’s indecision.

“Tell me about the dream,” he says instead.

So they sit together on the bed, Clint's hand resting heavily on that raw part of Bucky’s neck, digging his thumb in occasionally, and Bucky tells him about how he hungered to be released for missions. How they put it in his head to thirst for death and killing, and how he was present enough in stasis to know that desire so intimately. Clint feels sick as Bucky describes the chair, but he says nothing. He presses two fingers into a deep bit of wound when Bucky tells how he tried to drink a child’s blood, early on, thinking maybe that carnal food would fill the thirsting part of him. Of course, _nothing_ had satisfied the hole Hydra put in his brain, but he says how he never regretted it, and so Clint digs in until he gets blood welling up on Bucky’s shoulder. He keeps at it until Bucky relents, apologizing.

The sun rises eventually, casting chilly light into the room. Bucky looks well-rested, more or less, but Clint's sure he looks like shit on a shingle, and so he carefully excuses himself. He asks JARVIS to tell anyone asking after him that he marathoned James Bond movies last night and won't be up. He carefully retches into the toilet, thinking about a younger Natasha loving Bucky, learning combat from him, being _in love_ with him.

Sleep comes easily, but a too-fucking-young Natasha with the perfect skin of pre-pubescence waits for him there. She stares fiercely into his eyes, and it makes Clint blush horribly. He's comforted, somehow, by the spray of his arterial blood against her smooth child’s breast as he sinks into that foggy sort of dreamdeath, where the images fade away into blackness and the dream itself is what dies. He rests well enough after that.

 

 

##  Act I Scene IV

Clint is ripped out of sleep, stuck frozen in bed and panting and dry heaving and his body is crawling with cold sweat and jittering. There’s a horrible pressing weight on his chest, twelve tons of bricks or maybe just the press of a scepter. He can’t see in the thick dark of his room, can hear nothing. He tries to reach out for his aids, but his arms won’t move, and another thick wave of panic rolls over his body like a lick of flame. It burns, and it burns up all of the oxygen in the room, leaving so little left for him to breathe. He’s distantly aware of an erratic buzzing by his shoulder, but maybe it’s just the shaking of his shoulders as he tries to pull something— _ anything _ —into his lungs.

He’s there for hours and days, this weight bearing down on him. It crushes every bright bit of him to dust.

He’s there for hours and days, or maybe just until a stripe of light appears in the corner of what he can see, widening and widening. Bucky steps out from it, hair aglow with the fluorescent light. All at once, Clint heaves his body forward and air like ice floods his lungs. Somehow, he’s coughing and retching and trembling at Bucky’s feet, wondering how the fuck long he’s been outside his door.

He feels some speech-vibration under his hand which has found its way to gripping Bucky’s thigh, and the faintest brush of fingers against his shoulder. Clint wants to lean and sink into that touch, be drawn in by that golden thread of contact. Touch is  _ real;  _ he never hallucinates fingers. He wants to dry his face on Bucky’s shoulder, or maybe keep crying and just muffle the sound there.

That strong leg isn’t in his grip anymore. All at once, he’s falling flat forward, catching himself at the last second before his nose hits the floor. Bucky’s boots are already out of sight, walking so carefully that Clint feels no movement in the suite. Clint chokes out a horrible strangled sob, hopes maybe Bucky will come back. Knowing he won’t, Clint shakes to pieces like paper in water. He shakes with such force that his teeth clatter together, his arms won’t let him push himself upright. The carpet is irritating on this skin, and some bitter little part of him hopes it’ll scrape his skin raw, maybe clean off the scum-layer of Loki left behind on him.

All at once, strong arms are rough under his armpits. He’s yelling, he knows, but can only hear the barest hints of it without his aids in. The screaming doesn’t matter: the arms don’t relent until he’s sort of upright. No amount of thrashing throws the person behind the arms, but that’s not surprising. Clint’s not particularly sure he’s even really putting up a fight. He’s just so  _ tired. _ His eyes are too gummed up and sticky with tears to see much, but when a hand claps over his nose, the sudden smell of pine and warm flesh and smoke calms him right away.

“Bucky,” he breathes, feels an answering rumble against his back. “Can’t hear,” he manages, wishing he could hear how loud he is. How wrecked his voice sounds.

Bucky’s a little utilitarian when he’s trying to care for someone, Clint finds. He’s all military efficiency, with an intimidating focus that makes Clint sort of uncomfortable. He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to be cared for. He’s the fucking idiot kid from Iowa, the dumbass carnie who thought he could hang with the big boys. He says as much, and gets a withering glance from Bucky, who pauses long enough in stripping Clint of his sweat-sticky, cold pants to very deliberately sign STOP and NO. The movements aren’t easy, but they fill Clint with a horrible wet feeling in his heart. When he tries to heave his heavy carcass forward to sign something back with shaking hands, Bucky stops him, spells L-I-T-T-L-E with hesitating fingers. He only knows a little. Clint falls back on the bed, nodding.

Bucky strips him down to nothing, sponge bathes him with cool water. He pats witch hazel over Clint’s forehead and the back of his neck, and when Clint starts to shake again, he holds him. He presses his hands, contrasting hot calloused flesh and oil-smelling metal, hard over Clint’s ears and rocks him until the panting stops. It occurs to Clint that Bucky is so good at this, so scientific about helping because he probably  _ had  _ to be. He and Steve probably had to hold IED-blown kids until exfil could arrive, bring men back to the present and away from the wet horror of the field. For that matter, Bucky had probably held  _ Steve  _ through this shit, back when he was a little towheaded stringbean of a boy.

Clint is so fucking  _ tired,  _ but he doesn’t really expect to sleep until he blinks and there’s sun pouring in through the windows. His head is beating a wicked tattoo, all dehydration and lack of caffeination, and he groans. It’s probably an awful noise—he wouldn’t know. What he does know is that Bucky’s sitting by the shining bank of windows,  his eyes soft and sad. God, he always cries so hard he gives himself migraines, and if his feelings about the light in his room are any indicator, today is no exception.

Clint slips his aids on, one at a time, and winces at the pop as they come online. “Hey,” he says, softly. “Thanks for, uh, all this.” Bucky’s eyes go wide for a breath of a second, and then he’s all composure.

“JARVIS called me,” he says.

“Hey, don’t act like you didn’t help.  _ Thank you, _ ” he says again, emphasizing it as he forces his way to sitting up.

Bucky fidgets for a second, finally clears his throat and says, “I should go. I’ll be late for my run with Steve.” Clint looks after him helplessly. The horrible feeling, wet and sucking, in his heart is back and he furrows his brow. It’s like Natasha all over again, and knowing how their pasts are linked makes it all so fucking weird.

“Hey, Jay, why’d you call Barnes?” he asks the empty room instead of dwelling. “I know Natasha is home.”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” comes the polite reply. “He was awake, and I thought that he may benefit from helping you in the same way you do him. Was I wrong to do this?”

Clint doesn’t reply right away, instead looks down at the Sex Pistols shirt Bucky had put him in and the washcloth forgotten on his nightstand and the rumpled cushion of the chair by the windows, dragged in from the kitchen.

“No,” he says finally. “You weren’t wrong.”


	2. Act II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even understand why he feels so strongly about this, about Bucky not showing friendship to him when they’ve mostly only spoken where others couldn’t hear them. Clint stops with the carafe halfway to the counter, brow furrowing. Come to think of it, he’s never had a conversation with Bucky. He’s never sat down with the guy and shot the shit, or shot the targets, or done any sort of normal thing. He’s never seen any part of him aside from the leftover crust of Winter Soldier in his mind and this little bit of the century-old camaraderie between him and Steve.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occurred to me in the last week that i should make a bit of a disclaimer regarding the canon this follows. or, rather, doesn't follow. i've taken some creative liberties in combing the cinematic universe with the comics. i've also completely made some shit up. so, in this universe, phil lives thru loki's attack, clint has 30% hearing in one ear and 60% in the other (this won't be a central theme or anything; although i've experienced hearing issues, i'm not deaf and i can't write to those experiences), bucky doesn't decide to be frozen until his triggers can be deprogrammed, and natasha is... sort of supersoldier. a little. i also will likely have cameo appearances or allusions to and mentions of various characters from the comics, but really, you don't need knowledge of them to enjoy this. ALL THAT ASIDE, i hope yall are enjoying it so far! please feel free to comment your thoughts.

##  Act II Scene I

Clint emerges around two in the afternoon, aids turned way down low so he can ignore the rest of the team. He’s got a kitchen in his suite, sure, but he rarely drinks coffee, and Tony keeps the  _ good  _ shit up on the communal floor: Cuban coffee. It’s bitter and tastes like a kick to the teeth undoctored, and it’s meant to be taken like a shot and with foamed sugar added in excess. Clint likes to drink it straight from its funny aluminum carafe, relishing the lemonface the bitterness pulls him into. He’s most of the way through the pot when Bucky and Steve walk out of the elevator, deep in conversation. 

“No, no, she never put lemonbalm in it. Ten bucks says that’s not even a real herb,” Steve is saying, an arm gentle about Bucky’s waist. 

“No bet, on account of I’d win and I won’t take candy from a baby. Also, you said that already,” Bucky replies. His eyes are bright with laughter, and it’s clear he doesn’t really care about being right and is just getting a kick out of telling Steve off. In turn, Steve’s eyes are just as bright and stunningly blue; the two of them seriously make a pair.

“But I’m  _ right,”  _ said Steve.  _ “ _ I oughtta know my mother’s own pasta sauce, and I oughtta know it didn’t have fake herbs in it.”

“See, Stevie,  _ you said that. _ ”

“Would you just admit I’m right?”

“No fucking chance, boy scout.”

The two are as easy as could be together, and Clint marvels a little at how different Bucky is when he’s not begging for forgiveness. Maybe the history books are right in calling him a charmer, because Clint can see nothing but six feet of sex appeal and flirt, and that’s talking to his best friend. He calls a bright “good morning, starshine” to them. Steve flashes him a long-suffering grin and replies in kind, but Bucky just grunts. Steve elbows him, and Bucky gives Clint a curt little greeting. Clint’s so startled that his surprise shows on his face, but he tries to school his expression quickly even though it felt a little like emotional whiplash. It must show real obvious on his face that he’s offended, because Steve’s immediately got his hands up in placation, glancing between him and Bucky.

“It’s not you, Clint,” Steve’s saying, at once frowning at Bucky and tilting his eyebrows up at Clint. The effect is a nearly-comical expression of disapproval that Clint absently thinks ought to be framed somewhere. Maybe Tony’s workshop, next to the framed bit of concrete wall where Clint puked after drinking a Dummy smoothie. “He’s still warming up to people who aren’t, uh.”

“You or Nat,” Clint finishes, tossing back the rest of the carafe in one long go. “Figures. I know how it goes, the whole brainwashing thing. I started out trusting Natasha and, like, JARVIS.” Clint can feel his face pulling tight despite his words, and knows that Steve can see it and will probably take it personal. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even understand why he feels so strongly about this, about Bucky not showing friendship to him when they’ve mostly only spoken where others couldn’t hear them.

Clint stops with the carafe halfway to the counter, brow furrowing. Come to think of it, he’s  _ never  _ had a conversation with Bucky. He’s never sat down with the guy and shot the shit, or shot the targets, or done any sort of normal thing. He’s never seen any part of him aside from the leftover crust of Winter Soldier in his mind and this little bit of the century-old camaraderie between him and Steve. Without realizing, Clint has gone from displeased to nearly seething, and it hits him like a train when he finishes setting down the carafe.

“Gotta go,” he grates out, leaving it sitting and shouldering past Steve, who calls his name. He calls again, but Clint is already stabbing at the buttons of the elevator, knowing full well that Steve is going to stay and sit with Bucky. As the elevator’s doors slip shut, he reaches up to turn off his aids to block the sound of Bucky denying any knowledge of Clint’s sudden moodiness. Clint can just imagine him with his palms upturned, shoulders raised in innocent denial, and for whatever reason, it ratchets the discomfort in Clint’s belly even tighter.

The problem isn’t that it hurts, it’s that he can’t figure out  _ why. _ There’s no reason for him to think that he and Bucky are friends based on their interactions, but if they aren’t friends, it hurts his head a little trying to figure out what they are.

When thinking yields no answers, Clint weakly chalks his glumness up to shot nerves from not sleeping worth shit the night before, and blows it off by shooting really far away things with ridiculous self-imposed handicaps. He still gets a perfect score shooting upside down which does a lot for his wounded ego. He still feels more or less like death on legs afterwards with the added bonus of throbbing shoulders and sweat cooling on his back. Running himself into the ground like this is nice, because it lets him pretend like it’s his body and not his heart that’s aching. His shots are weak the whole time—still hitting their mark, but without the sort of thoughtless grace he’s cultivated from years of practice.

It’s the icing on the cake, really. He’s so thrown because Barnes won’t talk to him that it’s messing with his game, with the one thing he’s of any use to the team for. It breeds in him an awful hopelessness. Growing up with nothing but a sharp mind, a cruel brother, and a bunch of crazy orphanage nuns (crazy enough that running away to the fucking  _ circus _ was a better option) has led to Clint having a great big chip on his shoulder. Without his skills, his eyes and his shooting, he feels like the team will eventually move on and lose faith in him. He wouldn’t blame them, not really. A regular human with no skill is just a liability, and civilians are liability enough—

With a gasp, Clint shakes his head, wrenching himself out of that maelstrom of thought. A cold sweat, not from exercise, has risen over his body; he tries to ignore the prickling of anxiety sweeping over his skin like electricity as he walks to the door of the gym, not bothering to stretch.

He feels so trapped, and since he can’t just go to ground without SHIELD, the WSC, and probably the rest of the alphabet agencies on his ass, he runs by hauling himself up into the vent system. Clint takes time visiting each of his secret hideaways until he finds one that has no human influence, no noise but the spinning of air: the vents of a disused section of offices halfway up the tower. There, in his little den, Clint curls up and doesn’t sleep, just drifts into his mind. He imagines himself as an arrow with a singular destination in the blurred uncertainty of battle, gliding like fate to find a home in a throat or an eye or a heart. Of course, it makes him feel no better at all, but it’s better than facing the rest of his teammates.

 

##  Act II Scene II

Clint has a nasty habit of unconscious self-flagellation. He’s only really forced to acknowledge it when Natasha rails on him for his choices, which she all seems to relate back to him hating himself. He  _ doesn’t  _ hate himself, but getting her to see that she’s wrong about anything with regards to Clint is high on the list of things that he’s accepted as impossibilities in his life. (It sits right between kicking his donut addiction and children shrieking ‘Hawkguy’ at him not filling him with unmanageable delight.) If he sometimes trains for too long just to feel the painful tightness across his shoulders, that doesn’t mean he hates himself. If he sometimes doesn’t call exfil until he’s near-starved and right about to be uncovered, that doesn’t mean he hates himself.

Natasha is very close to being the only person Clint really trusts these days, but even she has her limits. Those limits seem to mostly revolve around Clint: every time he tells Natasha that pain is a part of living, she gets a very tight and thin-lipped look about her, though, and tells him maybe he should remove his head from his ass before someone who cares removes it from his shoulders. Seeing her disappointed or worried hurts his heart, so he doesn’t mention it often. But really, he doesn’t hate himself. He’ll swear on it with a cocky grin and an eyebrow waggle.

So, if Clint goes twenty-eight hours without sleep up there in the vents and if he calls the long suffering Phil Coulson when he climbs down and expounds every single thing he hates about Bucky, down to and including the fact that he uses the same deodorant as Bruce, which should basically be personal style copyright infringement, it doesn’t mean he hates himself.

“Clint,” Phil cuts in gently when he pauses for breath while detailing the issues of Bucky’s shooting form. “ _ Clint.  _ You did this to Natasha, too.”

“Hated her? Like fuck I did, Phil, she’s done  _ had _ my heart from the start. And I can hear your dumb little nose-sigh, you jerk.”

Phil sighs again, and Clint can just picture him rubbing that spot on his shoulder beneath the strap of his holster, like how he always does when Clint’s cheerily performing a metaphorical interpretive dance on Phil’s last nerve. “No, no, I don’t mean hating her. I mean ignoring her like how Bucky’s ignoring her.” Clint says nothing, but he’s a little sour that Phil has seen directly through him (as usual). “You may not have outwardly ignored her, but you did refuse to show any feelings unless they became so much that you burst extravagantly. Be kind to him, Clint. It’s so much that he’s trusting Steve and Natasha after everything.”

Clint pauses at that, looks down at his hand. Suddenly, there’s a vague burning shame that he’s getting so angry over Bucky doing something so minor, and something so like what Clint himself would do—something he  _ had _ done. It feels so wrong to be hating this man for his ways of handling seventy-odd years of damage _ ,  _ but Clint’s heart won’t get its shit together and be on the same page as his head. It always sucks to be reprimanded by Phil, too. It makes him feel like the kid he never got to be in a shameful and don’t-know-no-better way.

“You think he’s just bottling this stuff up?” Clint finally asks, and his voice is very small in his ears. “You think the panic attacks, and him calling me—you think that’s the only way he’s got to reach out?” It’s like all of the fight has flooded out of him at once, and he feels exhausted in the wake of his anger. He slides down from where he’s leaning against the headboard of his bed until he’s flat on his back, shoving pillows to the side. Like this, he can stare up at the ceiling in its impressive blankness and imagine a movie projector playing on it Bucky’s nightmares and realities, the  _ why _ of his being.

“Of course I do. Why else would he always come to you when he’s panicking?” Phil stops, clearly not finished, and Clint waits for him to continue. Three beats of silence, and Phil finally speaks again. “I think, Clint, that you’re angry because you see too much in him that’s like you, and you still haven’t fully forgiven yourself. You see him making the mistake you made with Natasha.”

“I’m not like Natasha to him,” Clint says without thinking. He can’t gather the strength to say anything more substantive and less defensive without picturing Bucky’s lips and hers in the same space. “She loves him, you know. He trained her in the Red Room.”

“That’s none of your business, and certainly none of mine,” Phil says sharply. In the background, Clint can hear the bubble of something being poured. Besides, he knows it doesn’t matter—he’ll eat his quiver if there isn’t a great big red ‘ASSOCIATE OF MURDER CYBORG MOST UNDESIRABLE’ in Natasha’s file, maybe complete with a saucy caricature of her smooching Bucky. “Clint, I think perhaps she loved him once, but not anymore. I’ve certainly never seen a spark beyond memory between the two of them. I also think that you’re only this upset because you’ve had a very complex week, and you don’t trust your therapist nearly enough.”

Clint says nothing, just heaves a sigh and whines, not caring even a little that he’s acting childish in the face of Phil’s unflappable facade.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” chides Phil. “How’s this: try finding Bucky when he’s not upset and build a friendship. I bet he could use a Clint Barton. Steve’s such a boy scout, and Natasha is, off the record, fucking scary.” Clint laughs easily at this, reading between the lines in the same breath. The unspoken other side of this, as Clint hangs up with a quick farewell and a quip about moodswings, is that  _ he _ could use a James Buchanan Barnes. Clint slips his hearing aids out and lets the roaring silence wash over him and thinks maybe that’s true. 

 

##  Act II Scene III

The first time Clint tries to find Bucky’s friendship, it’s a goddamn disaster. He thinks, in retrospect, that this should surprise exactly no one, but at the time, it seems like it makes sense to start on common ground. Mutual interests. 

Like shooting, for instance.

Clint hadn’t really expected for Bucky to be anywhere near his skill level when he challenged him. For chrissakes, the guy had spent the better part of the past century as an only occasionally murderous Klondike bar, but besides that, no one was ever a true challenge for Clint. Natasha has him easily matched hand-to-hand and close quarters, but he smokes her in long-range; Tony’s aim is only any good because of JARVIS and JARVIS may be elegant for a computer, but he’s still a computer, and there’s not a lot of art to that sort of calculation. Even Rhodey, on the one occasion he’d been fool enough to challenge Clint, couldn’t outshoot him, but Bucky comes damn close. His ability is a stunning mix of the calculus of machine from his arm and the adjustment of instinct from his mind, and it’s something that Clint has never seen before. Sure, Clint has seen the man in action before, but at the time, he’d been more occupied in not getting murderated to death and hadn’t been really watching his technique. Up close, it’s a little breathtaking.

As in, he’s out of breath.

“Jesus,” he pants, elbows on knees. “Jesus Howard Christ. You’re—you’re fucking swift, you know that?”

Bucky doesn’t reply. He doesn’t really need to; of  _ course _ he knows he’s the fastest thing with a robot arm and a gun on any side of the Mississippi. Clint wishes, when he looks up and sees the gun, that he’d insisted on bows only. If he was allowed to use his pretty new recurve—or even a fucking Nerf bow—maybe then he’d stand a chance. 

The thing is this: Bucky isn’t actually a better shot than Clint, not in terms of accuracy. He’s good, but he’s give or take three inches, where Clint is give or take zip. What he  _ is  _ is unholy fast. Tony got all these wicked training programs with holograms and smoke bombs and shit up and running in the gym right after Clint moved in, and he’s been using them since. He always clears them, always gets all the headshots, but Bucky does it so  _ fast.  _ It makes Clint highly nervous and more than a little suspicious, watching him not even think as he distributes headshot after headshot, all easy spinning limbs like some sick gun carousel. Sometimes he misses, clips a hologram’s ear or shoulder, but the second or third shot always kills and follows so soon after that, in practical metrics, it doesn’t matter. 

Clint doesn’t say: I know it’s all in the arm and if you had to use your right hand, I’d lap you; I know you’re actually trying because you need validation; I can see the sweat on your back; I’m not actually winded at this point, just trying to make you feel better. Instead, he says, “It’s not, you know, typical for me to get winded doing shooting exercises.” Bucky might not be replying, but Clint just keeps on talking. “None of the others hold a fucking candle to me, which I’m sure you know, but you.  _ You.  _ You just barely fell short of my high score, and I don’t think you were putting in any real effort.” 

Even still, Clint’s shoulder aches pleasantly and his arm feels tingly from accounting for the recoil of the gun, so he’s not complaining. It also feels oddly nice to compliment Bucky, even if he’s building it up a little more than is strictly factual.

Clint finally heaves himself back to his feet, just in time to see the smug grin on Bucky’s face pressed back into blankness. Some dastardly, traitorous bit of Clint notes that the fuckboy grin is a good look on Bucky, and probably why even Steve makes jokes about him being a ladies’ man. Clint throws caution to the wind and wolf whistles, long and low. Bucky’s expression ends up even more contorted, that press from all sides that he gets when he’s not sure if a joke is funny, at his expense, or both. 

“So, tell me, mister tall-dark-and-lethal. Tell me something,” Clint says, straightening his figure up to full, arrow-straight height and catching Bucky’s eyes head-on. His breathing is instantly schooled as he speaks. “Are you gonna be up front with Steve ‘bout us being friends? Or am I going to have to keep knowing you on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ sort of basis?”

It’s like he’s flipped a switch. Bucky’s face closes off immediately, just like Clint thought might happen, but he  _ knows  _ it has to be said. He knows in his forebrain that Bucky’s only  _ got _ Steve, that there’s no part of him that’s comfortable trusting anyone not from Before, but he knows that Steve can only hold him up for so long. He’s a supersoldier, not the team therapist, and Clint knows how Tony leans on him already.

(When Phil told Clint that he was clearly seeing too much of himself in Bucky and that they ought to be friends, he’d been a little offended. He  _ has  _ friends; he goes for beer with Sam on Tony’s dime when he swipes the billionaire’s Black AmEx, he helps Bruce when he gets a hair up his ass missing Calcutta—Bruce says, “It’s  _ Kolkata,  _ Clint.” and Clint says, “Well, can you Cal-cutta me a slice of cheese?”— and hands him ingredients as he makes wildly complex and time-consuming recipes. He loves Natasha like he loves his bow. For fuck’s sake, he was calling Phil for advice, wasn’t he? Phil spelled it all out though, gave him all the details about how Steve can’t keep it together on the field when Bucky’s there, and how he’s worse when Bucky’s  _ not _ there. He explained how Steve couldn’t shoulder Bucky alone, not like how he used to; he’s got the whole of the team, and on a more theoretical level, America. Clint accepted that easily enough, deciding he could try Bucky out.)

Bucky finally says, “Friends,” like it’s a question, but it’s said so delicately that Clint can detect some underlying current, some electricity like any word could be the wrong one. Clint has a suspicion that every word is the wrong one.

“Yeah, man. Friends. Bosom buddies, peas in a pod, snipers in a nest, whatever.” Clint carefully keeps the hope out of his voice. He already knows that it’s too early to convince Bucky that this is what he needs, but he knows that he has to plant the seed before it’ll go anywhere. Watching emotions flicker across Bucky’s face at such a gentle suggestion, Clint has a startling thought: he’s the only member of the team who’s willing to ask for support and advice, and he’s spent a total of three days in the last week living on Wonder Bread in the junction of two air conditioning ducts. And god, they’ve  _ really _ got a problem if Clint is the most well adjusted member of the team.

The silence just stretches on and on, until finally Clint heaves a put-upon sigh. “Look, man, I don’t want to push you into anything. Really, I swear. I just—you’ve been through a lot, yeah? No,  _ listen, _ ” he bites out authoritatively as Bucky turns to leave. “Listen. You’ve been through a lot, you were gone forever and a day, you’re programmed to the gills, yada yada. I get it. I’ve been showing you that, haven’t I? I’ve been proving I get it. That’s half what—” Clint makes a vague wobbly hand gesture between the two of them. “— _ this _ is. It’s me getting it. Now, I don’t know ‘bout you, but I like to be friends with those who get it. Here’s the thing: if you’re not ready now, whatever. I’ll still be here.”

Bucky says nothing, just rolls his eyes, and Clint wants to beat the person who taught him that one (Clint is willing to bet it was Tony.).

“I have Steve. I’m not replacing Steve,” he finally says when Clint won’t break the eye contact. Clint is sure his face goes all horrible and twisted, but he doesn’t stop Bucky as he strides past and towards the elevator. That ever present scent of Bucky, all mountains and cigarette, drifts after him. It makes Clint so fucking  _ angry _ , even though he had promised himself before that he’d stay calm _. _

“No need to posture, Barnes. I get it. I said I get it, and I do; you don’t need nobody right now.”

It always seems to end like this: on Bucky’s terms, with Clint staring at his broad shoulders retreating. For all that he’s some Calvin Klein model looking beast of a guy, predictably broad in the right ways, he’s so wildly emotionally inconsistent that it leaves Clint’s head spinning. Clint doesn’t  _ get  _ it. He just wants to reach out for the guy and give him his little piece of the twenty-first century, show him Dog Cops and the Super Bowl and Cards Against Humanity. He wants to buy him one of the sweaters from Spencer’s with the humping reindeer and take him to see Cirque du Soleil. He wants to shove his thumbs in the guy’s mouth, just to stretch it into a smile. But Clint’s no idiot, and he knows that hoping for it is the quickest way to ensure it never happens.

 

##  Act II Scene IV

Turns out, Clint isn’t going to still be here. Not always, at least.

“Barton. Says it right here,” says Fury, making  _ very  _ deliberate eye contact. Clint would never admit it to anyone, but the man scares him more or less shitless. “Barton, Clinton Francis to be reinstated as a restricted-duty Level 7 specialist agent of SHIELD.”

“With all due respect, Director—” Fury raises an eyebrow and snorts, which is fair—Clint rarely gives  _ any _ respect. “—there is no fucking way I’m ready to be back in the field. Did Dr. Stewart approve this?”

“I’m sure he would if we asked, but this is coming straight from Hill and myself. We need you, and what information Selvig left us with indicates that there’s no risk of you relapsing or being taken under once again without direct intervention from Loki. There is some indication that you may, in fact, be  _ more  _ resistant to being interfered with now.”

“How do you know how well I’m doing?” At that, Fury just cracks a knowing smile. Somehow, it’s miles more threatening than when he isn’t smiling. Clint’s sure he doesn’t really want to be told how he knows, and so he just heaves a sigh. “Can we at least rework my contract? No work in Russia, or any other ass-ends of civilization?”

“Request denied, agent. Get your ass down to Coulson’s office; I have it on good authority he wants to make up for lost time by kicking your ass.” There’s some weight to Fury’s words that Clint can’t exactly place, but he imagines it probably has something to do with the whole alien-god-brainwashing-murder thing. Probably.

The elevators here at SHIELD headquarters aren’t nearly so speedy as those at the tower (Clint makes a note to tell Tony—it’ll make the man positively  _ gleeful _ ), and so the trip from Fury’s office to Coulson’s takes a good few minutes. Plenty of time for Clint to reflect. 

Being here on base always brings to the front of his mind bright, bright blue and the crackling ozone-smell of Loki’s magic or the warm, rich smell of his leather garments. He never really brings it up—it’s possible that Natasha is the only person he’s fully told, which his therapist would probably cream himself if he heard—but those sickening memories of muscle and mind never leave him. He’s still sure some days that if he catches his reflection in a mirror or a glass or a car that its eyes will be shining as blue as the sky and as bright as death. It’s an inexplicable sort of dysphoria that Clint has to deal with, to know that his reflection is correct but to still feel some weird tugging wrongness in the bottom of his soul.

His thoughts are bordering on panic by the time he’s facing the well-seasoned wood door of Coulson’s office. Clint’s feet brought him here despite the turmoil in his mind, and that says a whole lot about his relationship with and trust in his (former?) handler.

“Come in, Barton,” Phil calls through the door before Clint has a chance to make his presence known. Clint’s a little startled, but Phil’s voice instantly grounds him.

“How many times have you called my name to an empty hallway, sir?” Clint asks as he closes the door behind him.

“I’m never wrong, agent.” The twinkle in Phil’s eye is bright, and Clint feels a wave of relief wash over him: he feared that things would be somehow awkward in person, despite their frequent phone calls. “I imagine Director Fury explained the general situation, yes?”

“That I’m back on board? Yeah. Uh, yes, sir. He also said something about you wanting to kick my ass?”

“No ass-kicking. I imagine he said that for effect.” Phil chuckles. 

Clint feigns shock: “Fury? You’re—are you telling me, Phillip J. Coulson, that Nick  _ motherfucking _ Fury would do something for effect? For aesthetics? Sir, I am  _ shocked. _ ”

At that, Phil’s eyes crinkle up and he laughs brilliantly. “I’m sure he’ll be flattered to hear that. And to think all that I needed to do to get you to call me ‘sir’ like every other agent was to nearly die.”

“Don’t get used to it. It just seems cumbersome to address you by your full title of ‘Phil Coulson, backseat driver of the United States socioeconogeopolitical machine’,” Clint says, effecting a saucy wink. Phil snorts a little, and his mouth quirks up at the end in another smile, which Clint takes as a victory

“Cumbersome, not to mention technically inaccurate.”

“Sorry, I’m totally undercutting your sphere of influence by not mentioning your power over the world at large.”

Talking to Phil is just so  _ easy _ , and so they go back and forth like this for a time. It never used to occur to Clint that their camaraderie was unusual or wrong, but the thought hovers in the back of his mind mind. He still fears that maybe he  _ did _ kill Phil and that maybe he’ll come in one day to find an empty office and an invitation to a memorial service. He never mentions the fear: entertaining his paranoia is his little way of punishing himself, one that even Natasha can’t get him to give up. Besides, paranoia has saved his ass more than once; he  _ is _ a sniper.

Eventually they wind down and a file is pulled: intel and objectives for a new mission to be reviewed, all bound in a nice three-ring. It’s a light cover op in Colombia, an escort mission for some scientist that SHIELD thinks HYDRA would find to be an easy, appealing target. Clint knows damn well that it’s a test, and his suspicions are confirmed when Phil mentions that he’ll be in the field with Clint. Up until Loki, Phil hadn’t gone with Clint on a mission that wasn’t deep cover or highly sensitive in a few years. It seems fitting to Clint that it’s changing now; he might tell his therapist that it wasn’t his fault and he knows he can be trusted, but beneath that, he doesn’t have a bit of trust for himself. Not really.

“It didn’t work,” Clint suddenly says in a lull in the conversation.

Phil raises his eyebrows minutely, but doesn’t pretend not to know what Clint’s talking about. Thank god for that. “With Barnes? Did you expect it to?” he says.

Clint blinks in confusion, and says, “Uh, yes. I mean, I’ve been the only person other than Steve or Nat that he’ll even  _ look  _ at for, like, two weeks now. For fuck’s sake, he had JARVIS call me when he had a nightmare!” Phil already knows this, of course, but Clint doesn’t care. He’s not sure why he’s getting so worked up, but by the cant of Phil’s eyebrows, it must be obvious.

“Now, forgive me if this is trite, but I think things continue to exist even without being acknowledged,” Phil says. “You could say that ignoring the elephant in the room doesn’t kill it.”

Clint gapes for a second. His thoughts are not so quick as Phil’s, but something clicks into place. “Are—are you saying  _ not to put a label on it? _ Holy  _ shit,  _ Phil, next thing I know you’ll be telling me to ask him to the spring fling with a gel pen note.”

The look on Phil’s face is a unique one that would be patronizing on anyone else, but on him, it seems so natural. Besides, he’s not wrong; by every metric, Clint and Bucky  _ are  _ friends. If there’s something about that word that flips a switch to wrongness in Bucky’s brain, it’s not Clint’s business to tell him that’s wrong. 

Somehow, knowing that it’s more an issue of labels than anything else doesn’t actually quiet the angry part of Clint as he leaves Phil’s office. It’s makes him a little more bitter, in fact: Clint feels like his offer of friendship has been distinctly cheapened by Bucky so lightly brushing it off. Somewhere along his way back to his suite, he decides that he won’t turn down the guy’s friendship, shoulder it be offered, but Clint won’t keep the olive branch out. It would certainly be fucked up in a high degree to deny Bucky camaraderie, but there’s nothing saying that Clint should continue to exhaust himself by putting in all of the work.

Besides, he’s got a job to do again.


	3. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘It’s not until they’re in the quinjet flying over the southeast US that Clint realizes he feels good. He’s picked up a tan wandering around Medellín, his mind feels sharp in a way that only comes from nonstop mission hypervigilance, and he hasn’t had a single endless, blue nightmare in the whole two weeks. The thought hits like a renaissance, a renewal of his old vigor that was lost sometime before Loki, and it spreads through his mind slowly until he’s grinning.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this week's chapter is short and light, being an intermission, but act iii should make up for it. thank you so much for reading, and again, thanks to charlie for being the best.  
> EDIT: (28 jun 2017) i'm so sorry; this week's chapter is going to be a day or two delayed. my life became insanely complicated in the past few weeks and writing is forced out of the spotlight by, like, work or whatever. i'll do my best to have chapter four up by the weekend, but i make no promises.

##  Intermission

The mission in Colombia is long and boring. It takes two weeks to convince the scientist to leave the country, which is fucking  _ ridiculous _ , but they only have to neutralize, like, three HYDRA idiots _.  _ Even with nearly unfettered freedom during the day or when Phil’s on watch duty, Clint only barely keeps himself in check. Contrary to SHIELD-wide belief, though, he’s actually really good at his job and at following orders. It helps, too, that Medellín is a beautiful city full of food and his Spanish is still good, so he treats it like a SHIELD sponsored vacation. He even buys Natasha a little wooden doodad, a tiny bull whose head wiggles when it moves.

Even when he can occupy his time with mindless wandering and exercise, cover ops aren’t Clint’s strong suit. Sure, he’s good at them, but he gets real twitchy waiting like this, and knowing that it’s a test makes him all the tetchier. Halfway through, Phil brings Clint a pack of darts and a shitty little mp3 player—a Phillips GoGear Vibe, which is a hilarious name that Clint will never let go—and it gets a whole lot easier to deal with the days when he’s stuck with the scientist.

And, really, there are good things about the calculated blandness. Clint makes a list of things to think about:

  1. am i ready to be back in the field (read: am i confident loki’s gone)
  2. this whole Thing with barnes
  3. need to get laid
  4. emp arrowheads? talk to tony
  5. can i have a dog in the tower?????
  6. SONIC ARROWHEADS
  7. challenge barnes with bow



By the end of the mission, he’s spent two entire days on number one, which kind of just makes him twist into a weird self-loathing place in his head. He only quits dwelling on it because Phil gives him one of his patent pending  _ looks _ and says, “You’re thinking too loud, agent.” Number two takes a back burner, because numbers three through six are way easier to address by setting a reminder to make a Tinder profile when he gets back stateside and sending Tony an email. Number seven sort of catches him up, and he ends up combining it with number two, to create:

    8. ~~figure out what barneseses deal is~~ god almighty smile upon me that i may SPEAK TO BARNES

—which doesn’t really warrant a whole lot of thought. It’s a pretty straightforward objective, and Phil gives him a very elementary ‘told you so’ look when Clint shows him. Coming from Phil, it somehow misses patronizing and goes straight to genuine compassion, which is excellent. Clint doesn’t get nearly enough of that—Natasha only gives out so much compassion, and it’s atypical for it to be very surface-level genuine, although it touches Clint’s heart in its own way.

Clint asks Phil one day why he's handling Clint for what is, in essence, a milk run.

“Clint, how much money do you think SHIELD has put into you over the years?” Phil replies.

“Uh, shit, I don’t know. Probably a lot. I’m sort of high maintenance,” Clint says.

“Probably a lot is about right. But what’s important is an agent’s ROI—their return on investment. In other words, how much SHIELD saves by taking out that initial investment.” Phil takes a sip of his coffee before continuing. “You, Clint Barton, have one of the highest ROIs of any agent currently employed by SHIELD. We hardly ever have to delegate more funds to you, and you’ve saved more than enough money and lives on our end to make up for what we have spent.”

Clint is startled into silence for a second, blinking at Phil, and then he laughs. “Holy shit, Fury’s a dog, ain't he? He'd quantify and qualify anyone what sat in front of him long enough.” 

“Of course, but so would I.” Phil is suddenly very serious. “You're an indispensable asset, Clint. Without you, SHIELD was in a sorry state.”

Clint wonder when he became  _ Clint  _ and not  _ Agent Barton _ on missions. It fills him with vague warm pricklies that are sort of reminiscent of when Natasha first agreed to let him take her in. However, Clint's overarching self-esteem issues (that, like,  _ totally _ don't exist) make that kind of direct appreciation and camaraderie make his teeth itch. It all has Clint feeling like he's going to crawl right out of his skin, so he only bares it for a moment before tipping Phil an egregious wink and saying, “Aw, don’t kid me, I know you just missed my grade A personality on the comms.”

Phil shakes his head and smirks into his coffee, and that’s that.

Exfil is laughably easy. The extraction point is just a hair over two hours out of the city. The Colombian landscape is beautiful, and the ride is comfortable despite the three of them being crammed in a  _ tiny  _ decrepit clown car-reminiscent Geo Tracker. It’s spray painted a blotchy matte purple with DIY cow-print upholstery, and Clint had howled when he saw it. They had needed a vehicle for the op, so Phil shrugged and bought it on company plastic like the good handler he is. Phil is a  _ damn _ good handler, and knows precisely when to practice indulgence. 

It’s not until they’re in the quinjet flying over the southeast US that Clint realizes he feels  _ good. _ He’s picked up a tan wandering around Medellín, his mind feels sharp in a way that only comes from nonstop mission hypervigilance, and he hasn’t had a single endless, blue nightmare in the whole two weeks. The thought hits like a renaissance, a renewal of his old vigor that was lost sometime before Loki, and it spreads through his mind slowly until he’s grinning. He digs through the duffel by his feet for the steno pad he wrote his list on and stares at it for a long minute. His brow is furrowed but his hand is sure when he very deliberately puts a single straight line through item number one.

He writes another line beneath the list:

to do: request full clearance, active duty from fury. 

When he looks up, Phil is carefully Not Looking at Clint, but Clint reaches over to tap him on the shoulder and point at the bottom of the page. He gets a warm, proud smile from Phil in return, and it feels like the beginning of something. It feels like the beginning of a new section of his life and like the end of the miserable gray time that Loki began.

Clint is  _ excited. _

Fury approves his request without even reading it. He approves it while making  _ direct eye contact  _ with Clint. Clint would be irritated (he thought it would be the ultimate middle finger if he went through all the appropriate channels for the first time in his career and had Shannon in Admin walk him through the request forms, which took three days) but the irritation is overshadowed by the fact that Fury is still fucking scary.

As Clint turns to leave the office, wondering if the director’s terror factor was greater or less when he had both eyes, a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. It nearly scares the living shit out of him, but he holds himself steady and silently thanks his training for not jumping.

“It’s good to have you back on board, Specialist. You’re a fine asset,” Fury says when he turns. “A fine asset.”

Clint raises his eyebrows and says, “Thank you, sir.” and tries not to let on how great it feels to have that approval. Really,  _ everything _ feels great, and he’s just glad that Fury isn’t trying to dampen that.

The rest of the day is a mess of meetings and approvals and a really tense therapy session that’s mostly Dr. Stewart trying to remind Clint that one good mission does not a clean bill of mental health make (he gives his approval at the end of the hour anyways, but Clint can feel it’s reluctant). The freaks down in Medical even manage to clear two hours for his physical and field readiness tests, which are hilariously easy—Clint gets it, really, but he can’t believe they’d think he’d let himself go. Medical knows better than anyone how he’ll punish himself to the breaking point with exercise because they often deal with the aftermath, but they still seem surprised when he passes with flying colors, throwing in some flair and pomp and a few well-aimed winks. One particularly brave new kid, skinny and tall with a hilarious (but not unattractive, Clint notes, barely containing laughter) fashion mullet, wolf whistles when he comes in off the indoor track, and he toes a ridiculous bow.

It’s all so  _ easy, _ and Clint has missed that. SHIELD has always been just what he, a middle school-educated Child Protective Services case-turned-carnie from god-accursed  _ Iowa _ needed: a meritocracy. So long as he listens and makes good calls and continues being an asset, he continues being rewarded. It feeds a long-abandoned thing inside him that aches for approval. 

The tests and catching up with the half of SHIELD that’ll still speak to him (Clint diligently Does Not Think about the other half) take up most of his day, so by the time he hails a cab back to the tower, it’s half past five and he doesn’t actually make it back until quarter after. It shouldn’t have taken that long, really, but he still gives the cabbie a big, fat tip and thanks him as he gracelessly clambers out of the sort of gross sedan.

When he gets up to the communal floor, Bruce is cooking some sort of Indian-Taiwanese fusion, and it smells  _ incredible. _ Clint tells him so, and Bruce smiles gently and says, “I’m so glad you think so, Clint. How would you like to do the washing up?” and so Clint spends the next hour puttering around the kitchen with Bruce. Clint’s no Michelin-starred chef, but he’s a fair hand in the kitchen, and he enjoys it. The rest of the team starts to drift in as they cook; first comes Steve, who warmly says hello and that he hopes the mission went well, and Bucky, who says nothing but has a curious expression on his face. Tony and Thor and Natasha all show up, and it’s all so goddamn domestic.

They don’t sit at a table for their meal or anything—Bruce and Tony both have Issues with true domesticity that Clint like to stay firmly the fuck out of—so Natasha and Clint take heaping plates and a six pack of some hoppy microbrew up to the roof. They slip into roles, sometimes, just for fun. Tonight, they choose one of his favorites: they’re a repressed but earnest Bible Belt couple, all silver spoon and bland like Communion wafers. When he and Barney were at that god accursed orphanage, Clint used to imagine that he’d grow up to be just like that. He imagined he’d have a little wife who wore button-down dresses and pinned her long, long hair back if other men were around. He imagined they’d have a whole gaggle of kids, names plucked straight from the scripture, and they’d be the prettiest young family in town. 

Of course, landing himself in the circus and his subsequent discovery that he was a fruity little queer (it was a short, sour, and hurried affair behind the bandstand with his friend Mike that clued him in on that one) did a lot towards ruining that fantasy. What his awakening, as it were, didn’t take from him, Barney did; any time he caught Clint praying, he’d box him about the ears and say that God was probably dead anyhow.

Natasha snaps him from his reverie when she drops her soft lilt and looks him dead in the eye. “Clint,” she says. “What the fuck is up with you and James?”

Clint blinks for a second. “Uh, me and Barnes? Christ, that’s a loaded question. He doesn’t even wanna be friends, Tasha.” He hopes he can leave it at that, but she looks unimpressed. “Look, I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve just been helping him through it all. Same way you did to me. I think—I think he’s way too in his head about everything to lean on Steve, and besides, Steve is a goddamn structure fire in progress.”

Natasha hums her agreement and finishes her second beer. “Listen, I’d tell you to stop,” and there’s that stare again, sharp as an awl draining everything out of him, “but I think it’s a good move. He could use a Clint Barton.”

“Jesus, Nat, that’s exactly what Coulson said. You two are fucking freaky, you know that?” He pauses and takes a long swig from his beer. “But I don’t know, I think you might be right. I’ll figure it out.”


	4. Act III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky finally turns, puts his eyes on Clint. He’s beautiful in the exact way that burning buildings are—beautiful in the ‘thank god that never happened to me’ way of tragic things, and Clint is starting to get used to how that might just always yank on things in his heart.  
> “I told you once already that you don’t get to dictate what I do and don’t got in my head, Barton,” he says, his tone icy. “I’m no one’s toy anymore, and I’m not fucking stupid, neither. Can’t you just—” He cuts off with a strangled noise, brows all furrowed and eyes dark. His jaw works for a second, and then he just turns back to the episode that’s playing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry for the delays in writing this. this was a really difficult chapter for me to finish up, and my personal life has been... exciting. this chapter hasn't been as heavily betaed (if you've got spare time and would like to work with me as a beta, please do message me) as previous chapters, and scene iv is... completely raw. pardon any messiness, but i'm trying to get back on a strict update schedule, so this goes up today, goddamn it. so grateful to everyone who continues to read and support. please consider leaving kudos/comments!

##  Act III Scene I

Every SHIELD agent is given the option, when they contract on, of taking an on-site bunk. Most agents turn their noses up at this because the bunks are, at best, utilitarian. At worst, they’re claustrophobic slices of privacy-lacking Hell that land agents in Psych. Clint was brought in by Phil nearly 18 years ago, and at the time, 120 square feet of minimalist beige-on-gray quartering seemed like the Ritz Paris its goddamn self. 

The quarters weren’t a fancy affair then. In true government agency fashion, nothing has changed. Clint got a mostly beige room with gray metal furniture, no windows, and a plastic-covered extra long twin mattress. The set up is pragmatic to the point of austerity, but back then, it was the first 120 square feet he’d ever had to be just his. These days, he’s got safehouses spread halfway across the globe, his suite at the tower, and, frankly, more money than he knows what to do with, but something about his shitty little on-base bunk always makes him feel right at home.

Since he’s already on base for a refresher on policy updates (boring) and training regimens (only marginally less boring), he decides to swing by his bunk. Clint hasn’t been there, room number 6-012, in a solid few months, and its appearance startles a laugh out of him. Really, he’s expecting it to be, at best, empty, or, at worst, given to another agent.

Instead, it’s just the same as he left it. There’s a pair of crumpled boxer briefs wedged under one leg of the bed; a cup of coffee on the desk looks like its bacterial colonies are industriously begetting and perhaps approaching evolution; a knife sharpening kit is open on the desk. (The crowning jewel of the whole room is the a one-of-a-kind poster of Clint photoshopped as Katniss that Tony made. He even got Jennifer Lawrence  _ and _ Beyonce to sign it at a party before giving it to Clint. Clint always threatens to auction it off, but he loves it, really.) It’s much more homey and domestic than the suite in the tower has ever been, and perhaps even more than his and Natasha’s old bolthole in Bed-Stuy.

Looking around, it seems right to Clint to spend the next week here on base and clean because his bunk is a fucking pigsty and it smells like dust and rotten coffee. Clint is real good at compartmentalization, so he’s perfectly able to sing along to  _ The Best of Leadbelly _ as he tidies and stalwartly ignore the bit of him that feels weird about not having spent a night in nearly a month with Bucky.

The fourth repeat of  _ Where Did You Sleep Last Night _ comes and the guy in the next bunk over pounds on the wall for a solid thirty seconds until Clint shuts off the stereo and hollers through the wall, “Just be glad it ain’t the Nirvana cover, you damn philistine!” This is funny to Clint because he also unabashedly loves the Nirvana cover, but the guy only hollers a cheerful expletive and tells him to shut it off.

Stopping is a mistake. Now that he’s quit cleaning, he sneezes three times and discovers that his back feels like hell. It’s sort of amazing that he’s managed to clean for three hours given both that he normally never cleans and that there’s only 120 square feet  _ to  _ clean, but here he is. He feels somehow wholesome as he observes the stacks of clothes—separated as ‘keep’, ‘donate’, and ‘what the  _ fuck _ ’. He also feels hole-some, as in ‘my stomach is chewing a hole in itself’. Food time, definitely.

Before, he had a standing lunch appointment with Phil and, occasionally, ‘Blue’ Bostock who runs the range down on the second basement. Clint is charmed but unsurprised when he checks Phil’s public schedule and sees ‘lunch with Barton, Bostock’ from 12 to half past one. It’s coded orange, meaning ‘do not disturb under pain of death or demerit’, and Clint snorts as he makes his way to the elevator.

“How did you know I was on base?” Clint demands around a mouthful of lasagna. “Don’t tell me you haven’t changed your schedule in, like, six months. That’s too depressing.”

“My schedule isn’t the only one that’s public, Clint,” Phil says. He then narrows his eyes and points his fork at Clint. “I also have received two complaints today alone about raucous blues music on floor 6, which was a decent tip-off.”

“It’s not my fault that, uh, that Nutsack McGee nextdoor doesn’t appreciate the golden age of music.”

“Clint, you listen to synthpop. You listen to synthpop, honest to god, _ on purpose _ . You own a Beborn Beton poster. You—”

“Okay, okay!” Clint laughs, cutting Phil off. “Jesus. You’re, what, sixty, and you’re criticizing my taste in music. Jesus. I’m blaming Natasha.”

Phil snorts and takes a delicate bite of spinach. “Just don’t torture your floormates. They share a bathroom with you and it’s not my fault if they use all the hot water before you get there.”

The next three days go swimmingly, nice and easy. It’s all a vague blur of paperwork and range time and sparring and lunches with Phil. After dinner every night, he goes down to the gym and works himself into a hot, wholesome exhaustion and then sleeps clear through the night, no bad dreams. He’s getting in three square meals a day, and his weekly headshrinking is boring, which is a really great sign. He spends the whole hour in Dr. Stewart’s office talking about all of the things he’s doing, all on his own and without anxiety or nightmares.

The easiness is becoming routine, and Phil taught Clint way back in the day that routines serve two purposes: to be broken and, failing that, to create complacency. In the end, it’s Phil who breaks the routine.

Phil tells him on the third morning that they have an assignment in Bahrain in two weeks. It’s wetwork, he says, and looks at Clint intently, as if searching for any sign of hesitance. Clint carefully keeps his expression in check although his stomach swoops tellingly at the thought of killing someone.

“No prob, boss,” Clint says, pasting a bland look on his face and ducking out of Phil’s office.

He doesn’t even make it to his goddamn bunk.

By the time Clint finds a supply closet to duck into at the end of the hallway, his skin is crawling like there are a hundred pairs of eyes on him and his fingers are twitching for the grip of a gun or the string of his bow. Clint’s jaw  _ aches _ , which confuses him until he realizes it’s from clenching it, teeth locked shut like a pit bull’s. Every muscle in his body is just as taut and it all makes him feel like he’s going to burst at the lightest touch.

God.  _ Wetwork.  _ Back in the day, before SHIELD when he was trying to shed the last vestiges of his life as a carnie, he was a damn fine assassin. He didn’t tremble when confirming a kill; he didn’t blink at the burst of sound when he squeezed the trigger. For chrissakes, he’d built himself enough of a reputation that SHIELD had set out to bring him in. SHIELD, and MI6, and a ton of other state security agencies—even, for a brief few months until the Soviet Union imploded, the KGB.

Now the thought makes his stomach do acrobatics.

Before he’s really got time to think about it, his phone is out and he’s ringing Natasha. 

Thank god that Natasha is the way she is; she always picks up on the first ring if it’s Clint who’s calling.

“Clint,” she says, as warm as Natasha ever is. Clint sniffles and her tone changes to something much more tender and  _ much  _ harder to listen to. “Hey, Clint. What do you need? Talk to me.”

“Can—fuck, can you come get me? I’m at SHIELD, and I should be, uh, not at SHIELD, and I don’t wanna drive like this.” His last words come out close to a whisper, and she’s hushing him. The tears haven’t started spilling yet, not really, but his head is throbbing and he feels sick to his stomach. It’s rarely this bad this fast, and he knows Natasha can tell. “Thought I was doing better.”

“Clint, you are doing better. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Try not to hurt anyone, yeah?” She hangs up with a soft click, and Clint slumps to the floor of his refuge. This brings him nose-to-nose with a huge crate of ballpoint pens, the dusty business end of a mop, and a few ants. Fifteen minutes later, he’s still in the same spot. He’s now got the ants crawling over his hand and is wondering how Scott would feel about Clint so casually handling them.

Natasha knocks on the door, a quick little tapping beat they always use with one another. He croaks something that might be, “Come in,” and she opens the door. Her arms are crossed, and she seems so tall like this, looking down on him with the light all behind her. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s crying and pathetic and sitting on the floor of a supply closet, but in this moment, she looks like more like his savior than maybe anyone ever has. 

“Oh, Clint,” she says, and from her it’s not even a bit condescending.

He’s still a little petulant, a little bitter that anyone has to see him like this, so he says, “God, don’t baby me. God. I’m—fine, I’m fine.” Natasha’s eyebrow raises in a way that makes it damn clear how little she believes him. She gets her hands on him, one on a forearm and the other in his armpit, to hoist him up. “Strong,” he murmurs.

“What was that?”

“Said you’re strong like ox.”

“It’s a pity you having a panic attack doesn’t make you any nicer,” she says with a snort, but she looks at him to check she hasn’t offended him. He smiles weakly at her and tips a sloppy wink to let her know it’s alright. Natasha shouldn’t be worrying about him, really, and he’s already being a pain in the ass. “Quit it,” she says once they get into the hall.

“Quit what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking about. Quit it. You look all woebegone, and it gives me the creeps.”

“You’re so sweet,” he says, and really, she is. Natasha pats his face gently and murmurs something gentle in Russian. “Sure thing, babushka dearest.” She calls him a jackass and softly punches his shoulder for his snark, but the two of them aren’t great with public affections. It’s to be expected; neither has the best history with vulnerability.

When they get back to the tower, she runs him a bath (Clint doesn’t even put up a fight when she drops in a golden  _ thing  _ that sheds glitter and turns the water lemon-yellow) and they stay up all night watching  _ Broad City _ and looking at old photos of eachother. His favorite is the one where she’s got a threadbare old blanket wrapped about her with only her toes and nose and delicate fingers are sticking out, but her favorite is of his bare chest up to a grinning mouth. At the bottom of the frame, her knees are visible where she’s straddling him, and she’s written ‘безопасно’ across his chest. She told him that night that it meant ‘idiot’, and he laughed like he believed her. She told him years later on an operation that neither thought they’d come out of that it really means ‘safe’, and he had kissed her knuckles before taking thirteen impossible shots and getting them home.

 

## 

##  Act III Sc II

It’s late enough to be early when JARVIS wakes Clint up the next night. There’s always a stab of adrenaline that brings him into split-second mindfulness when he’s awoken, but JARVIS has learned to immediately assure him that there is no imminent danger. Before Clint even swipes his phone open, he sees the text from the AI: ‘Agent Barton. No one is harmed and the tower is secure. It is 4:40, and there is someone at your door.’

“Thanks, Jay,” Clint mutters as he rolls out of bed. He snags a pair of boxers (last night’s) off the floor and kicks an empty Gatorade bottle (last week’s) under the bed as he shimmies the underwear up. By the time he’s at the door, it’s been a few minutes and the energy from being awoken has faded into a fuzzy sleepiness. He’s scratching his ass and yawning lightly when the door opens to a dripping wet Bucky Barnes.

“Uh,” Clint says intelligently, and then, “Shit, dude, what happened, or, do you, like, want —fuck, sorry, come in?” 

Bucky shuffles in, and Clint notes the tremor in his Bucky’s flesh arm, how the fingers shift and twitch. He doesn’t smell terrible or musky, so Clint reasons that it’s not sweat soaking him to the skin. Bucky says, “Got caught in the rain,” which answers Clint’s unspoken question but explains precisely nothing. He must know that won’t satisfy Clint, because he continues. “It was so goddamn hot in my suite no matter how cold JARVIS lowered in and he told Steve last time I got it lower than 50 degrees in there so I went for a run.”

“At four in the morning?” Clint asks carefully, trying to keep the roughness of sleep out of his voice. Bucky just blinks in acknowledgement. “I’m not one to judge, but I feel like I oughtta remind you we have a gym, except I somehow feel like you weren’t running to keep your legs toned.”

At that, Bucky holds up his arms—wrists flat and palms open like he’s asking to be cuffed, and, _wow_ , Clint is never going to scrub that from his mind—and looks up at Clint and plaintively says, “I never did get done telling you what all I did for Hydra. And I get, you know how it is, I get antsy, and I didn’t think I deserve to ask you after—after what I said.”

“Jesus, Barnes,” Clint mutters. “You saying we aren’t friends didn’t actually make us not friends. Don’t be obtuse.”

Suddenly, things are occurring very quickly. Clint notes the following: Bucky’s hands are wildly disparate in temperature which is an odd feeling, also they’re on Clint’s forearms, Jesus  _ Christ _ ; Bucky is so hot that the rain is sort of evaporating off of him and he smells like warm flesh and pine and New York City; Bucky is—Bucky is saying something. Clint tries to pay attention.

“I think I need this,” he says. “I feel so goddamn frustrated, bottled up like shook cola.” Bucky’s silent for a second, and Clint can see anger and confusion and desperation all warring on his face. It would be fascinating except for the part where it isn’t because it’s  _ terrifying _ . The Winter Soldier doesn’t know how to feel, and he’s not knowing how to feel directly in Clint’s space. Suddenly, the Winter Soldier’s hands feels like a very unsafe place for Clint to be, but some part of him is okay being so close to the damp heat shifting off of Bucky. Some part of Clint likes being able to see the bright, wet flightiness in Bucky’s eyes, and that should be a red flag the size of Jupiter for Clint.

The thing is, and this is the thing: none of this really seems characteristic of Bucky, and Clint is highly fucking surprised. This emotional openness and intensity is so unlike the Winter Soldier that it has him a bit floored. He wonders if maybe this boyish honesty is all Bucky gave to the world before Zola took every good bit of him out, or if Bucky is just fucked up and looking for somewhere to put his feelings. In true hopeless romantic Clint Barton fashion, he hopes for the former, but is certain it’s the latter.

He says so.

“Look, Barnes, I think you’re not all… Not all with it at present, alright? I’m just a dude what’s been brainwashed, too. I’m no expert or—or something you  _ need.  _ Really, you might benefit from a therapist.” The anger that takes over Bucky’s features is much more in tune with what Clint knows of him, and the metal hand tightening on his forearm to the point of grinding pain is nearly a relief. Despite himself, Clint yelps, “Fuck!” but Bucky’s grip doesn’t let up.

“Don’t you goddamn well tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real. I’ve had e-fucking-nough of not feeling, not being allowed to feel. I’ve had enough of Steve telling me I ain’t feeling anything, neither, and you won’t do it to me, too,” Bucky says. It all comes out in one breath, like the air out of a blown tire.

“Cool, great, no gaslighting Robocop, good to know! Great. Great,” Clint mutters. He twists out of Bucky’s grip and takes three quick steps back to rub at the welts already pinking up on his forearms. “God, why did you even come here? You haven’t really told me anything, and I’m pretty confused. I know I said we’re still friends, which we are, you socially illiterate prick, but I’m getting some mixed signal whiplash here.”

“I don’t need a therapist,” Bucky says.

“Okay,” Clint says slowly. “You’ve made your thoughts on that, uh, more than clear.”

“I need someone who gets it.”

Clint sighs at that, because he had gone into the thing with Bucky hoping to avoid some weird dependency thing. He blames Bucky’s hands on him (the metal one had started warming up before Clint ducked out of his grip, and that was mighty distracting) and the fact that he’s tired for his reluctance to push the other guy away. Something about this—this being  _ needed _ feels so nice and feeds that something in Clint that longs for approval, longs to be useful.

He’s still half asleep, so it’s understandable that Clint is zoning out and getting enmired in his thoughts. Bucky makes some scratchy, frustrated noise in his throat

“Steve says—well, it was Stark what brought it up, but Steve says that—” Bucky says, haltingly. It’s not the first time Clint’s seen him hesitant, but this isn’t the measured hesitance that he gets when he’s unsure about the twenty-first century. In this moment, Bucky seems a touch nervous, but before Clint can ask what’s got his gander, Bucky’s lips are cool and damp and firm against his own. It would be fine—Clint would be all gentle and tell Bucky that they really can’t have something like that, that they’re just friends and that’s all—except it’s far too fine. 

It’s so  _ sudden. _ It’s just a second of a kiss, a single holy point of contact between their bodies, but it’s plenty long enough for electricity to trickle down Clint’s spine and rest like a knot at his stomach. But  _ fuck _ , if Bucky isn’t beautiful and right here for Clint.

Bucky pulls away, and there’s this funny sort of expression on his face. Clint’s not paying attention, because Bucky’s lips being not on his suddenly seems like a crying fucking shame, and he doesn’t get time to consider any alternate courses of action before he’s crowding himself into Bucky’s space. Bucky is comically holding his hands in the air by his shoulder like he’s being arrested, but Clint’s got his hands all over Bucky’s (damp, vaguely clammy, and sort of gross but  _ perfect _ ) neck. 

Bucky tastes like a spicy ashtray, all clove cigarettes and  _ Bucky. _ It’s kind of sloppy and more than a little wet and Clint has maybe never gotten harder faster in his life. The knot in his stomach is ratcheted tighter and tighter with every brush of teeth or tongue, and it’s—

_ Fuck,  _ it’s  _ not okay.  _ Clint comes to his senses—few though they may be—quite suddenly, and shoves Bucky away. It doesn’t actually do much, because Bucky is somewhat mountainous, and Clint’s biceps are only so strong. That funny look is back on Bucky’s face, and with a start, Clint realizes it’s a little bit of… hope, maybe. Something sweet, and tender, and wildly misplaced on the face of the Winter Soldier. It makes something in Clint’s heart wrench right then and there, but it also further cements the idea in his head that there’s no way in hell that this could possibly be good for Bucky.

“Christ!” Clint yelps, because  _ Christ,  _ he just kissed the Winter Soldier within an inch of his life and then  _ shoved  _ him. “Jesus! I am—goodnight!” He herds Bucky towards the hallway with another mumbled apology and then promptly slams the door in the poor guy’s face.

“Jay!” Clint hollers at the ceiling, completely unable to put any sort of damper on his volume. He has JARVIS get Natasha and then buries himself in blankets after putting in a Call of Duty disc.

When Natasha arrives, she’s remarkably understanding for having been woken up prior to the asscrack of dawn, but for her, that’s not really saying a lot; she’s still subtly catty and more than a little antagonistic as she scoops Häagen-Dazs out for both of them. 

“So,” she begins as she curls up around her bowl of green tea ice cream. Because he loves her, he keeps the stuff in his freezer even though he’s a strictly strawberry kind of guy. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Clint blinks at the television and grunts softly when he gets a headshot before replying. “ _ Do _ about it? Nothing, Tasha. I—I can’t date the Winter Soldier! I can’t want to date some emotionally illiterate ex-Soviet horror puppet. He’s—he’s whatever he is.”

“Wow, Clint, and I was thinking that emotionally illiterate ex-Soviet horror puppet were your thing,” says Natasha with a sly little smile. Clint rolls his eyes, but before he can snark back she’s gone all sibilant and serious, which he was hoping wouldn’t happen. “I’m going to stick my fingers right in an insecurity of yours now, so please don’t get irritable with me. Do you realize that you didn’t at all say you can’t kiss him? You jumped directly to dating, Clint. I think there’s something going on here, and no one here really believes you’re as dumb as your pretend to be.”

It takes effort not to get a touch belligerent at her words, but that’s all the more proof that they’re right. Clint  _ hadn’t _ really realized what he was saying and how it sounded, but now that she’s pointed it out, he’s very aware of all of the things that he’s feeling. It still doesn’t make sense, but the awareness is seeping through him slowly, coloring all of his recent interactions with Bucky very differently. Emotions aren’t one of the pillars of Hawkeye; feelings aren’t a target that can be hit dead-on. None of it is easy to him (thanks, dead parents, scary nuns, and actual freaks for that, he thinks) and that makes the whole thing even fucking scarier.

“You know what’s funny?” Clint finally says. Natasha hums in response. “Last time I got to really talking about Bucky, it was to Phil—before we headed out to Colombia, which I gotta tell you about—and he did the same goddamn thing. I was bitching about, what, Bucky’s deodorant or something, and Phil just cuts right to the heart of the thing. Like, he was talking like he was performing surgery on my poor, idiot emotions.”

“Clint,” Natasha says warningly, but he barrels on.

“What I’m getting at is—is I don’t know where I’d be without you two. You and him. The first two people to give me a fighting chance, and isn’t that depressing. Also, you suck and I hate you and stop making me be accountable for my emotions.” He cocks a sloppy grin, but he knows it’s forced, and the joke falls somewhat flat.

Natasha is quiet for a while. The only noise in the living room is the soft, constant thrum of air being circulated through the vent system and the occasional quiet sounds of onscreen enemies being obliterated where Clint’s got the volume way down. Without saying anything, Natasha leans over  and rests her head on his shoulder. Her hair is warm and tickling on his neck, soft and smelling just like dry, white citrus and warm skin. He absently tilts his head over on top of hers and keeps playing.

“You always say,” she starts. “That it’s you and me against the world. James was the gentlest of the people the Red Room brought in, and he’d say that to me, too. Just me; none of the other little girls. Not exactly that, either. He would say—” She pauses to remember. “‘Malen'kaya devochka, ya sobirayus' izmenit' mir, i ty kak.’ Little girl, he would say, I’ll change the world, and you’re all I need to do it.” Clint goes to shift away, uncomfortable with where this is going, but she turns to look him in the eyes and hers are blazing and there’s no real way he’s going to walk away when she’s like this. “Clint, he never goddamn once told me what was hurting him like he’s told you. Don’t you  _ dare _ act like there’s nothing special between the two of you. You don’t get to deny him the truth. I’ve said it before, but he’s not the only one who needs. You’ve got a James Barnes shaped hole in you, and I won’t let you ignore it.”

Clint nods, not sure what else to say to that. It touches some part of him, deep in his heart. Natasha is so deeply private that it’s incredibly rare for her to open up to him, and what she’s just said somehow doesn’t feel at all like it’s about him and Bucky. It feels like it’s about Natasha and Bucky, or even about Natasha and Clint.

He cracks a weak smile, finally. “You know me. If I haven’t got the heart to do right by myself, I’ll do right by you.”

Natasha’s eyes are so striking (when they first met, it wasn’t her hair that Clint noticed; it was her eyes, and they were how he knew she was ready to be brought it) and it drives a spike of warmth and memory into his heart again.

“You don’t get to deny him the truth,” she repeats. Somehow, Clint is sure that her words mean far more than admitting that there is kinship between him and Bucky.

 

## 

##  Act III Scene III

Clint finds Bucky in a well-stocked but disused lounge halfway up the tower the next day. He’s drinking a beer like it’s going to do anything and staring at the television, which is muted but playing  _ American Pickers _ with subtitles, which is on the low end of the garbage that even Clint and Phil will watch.

“Hey, man,” Clint says. He keeps his tone light with some effort, but Bucky only grunts in response from an armchair. Clint figures that’s probably fair on account of he slammed the door in the poor guy’s face the night before. “Can, like, we talk?”

Bucky nods. Onscreen, Mike Wolfe has got his hands on his head and is talking hurriedly about… the subtitles are a jumble of numbers and letters, so probably about old car parts. Clint admires how stubbornly Bucky is  _ not _ looking at Clint, but the effect is ruined by how he’s clearly got his eyes on the reflection of Clint from the mirrored vases flanking the entertainment system. Only Tony would have mirrored goddamn vases (and only Tony is the type to stretch out the vowel sound in vase so he sounds like some stereotypical queer British aristocrat, which wouldn’t be charming at all, except for it’s Tony) but they’re great for sightlines.

“Talk,” Bucky finally says as the silence grows.

“I’m just gonna—” Clint is mumbling as he sits down on a low couch. “I’m just gonna start off by saying I’m not mad or anything.”

Bucky finally looks at him. “Gee whiz, thanks, guy. Glad I didn’t anger you.” It’s really pretty rude, but Clint has psyched himself up for this enough that the words roll off, more or less.

“I freaked out,” Clint begins again.

“Really? Hadn’t processed that one,” Bucky mutters.

Clint narrows his eyes somewhat. “Alright, you know what,” he says. “It takes no effort to just not be a dick, Barnes. Just—just be not a dick, okay. I get that I am the exact sort of person who deserves it, but please, man. Just listen.” When Bucky doesn’t say anything, Clint takes a deep breath and continues. “I freaked out. I felt wrong it because you’re… you’ve been  _ hurt _ , in all these ways. I see it a lot, and I’ve been there too, and it feels like it would be really abusing the, what, the trust you’ve put in me.”

Bucky finally turns, puts his eyes on Clint. He’s beautiful in the exact way that burning buildings are—beautiful in the ‘thank god that never happened to me’ way of tragic things, and Clint is starting to get used to how that might just always yank on things in his heart.

“I told you once already that you don’t get to dictate what I do and don’t got in my head,  _ Barton _ ,” he says, his tone icy. “I’m no one’s toy anymore, and I’m not fucking stupid, neither. Can’t you just—” He cuts off with a strangled noise, brows all furrowed and eyes dark. His jaw works for a second, and then he just turns back to the episode that’s playing. 

Clint shuffles uncomfortably and lets out a tiny sigh. “Okay, okay, I hear you. I’m gonna quit beating around the bush here, okay? I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I haven’t been taking you nearly seriously enough, but I’m also sorry because I haven’t been taking myself seriously, either. And, sure, I mean, maybe there’s imbalance between us, but here’s the thing: I’m not really okay, either. When you come to me, you cede control, and that’s good for you but—but you’re  _ giving _ me control, and that’s what I need, Barnes.” Clint pauses to take a breath, feeling light-headed in a strange way not unlike the start of a panic attack. It’s disconcerting, but he just keeps talking. “I go to therapy and all and I say I know it’s fine to not be okay, but I don’t believe it for myself, I guess.”

Bucky leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He’s maybe glaring a hole in the carpet between his feet, or maybe he’s got that sad little smear of hope across his brow again. Clint wishes he’d just look up so Clint could see, but Clint can’t bring himself to ask. 

Finally, Bucky says, “You make me feel.”

“Uh, I do? Or, sorry—how?” Clint says after a beat, stumbling over his words.

Bucky looks up, and  _ oh _ —it  _ is _ that hope, but it’s so much more pure now: all sad and sweet and without the uncertainty of the night before. It’s a little angry, too, and that shows in the angle of his jaw and the crease between his eyes. Without thinking, Clint reaches up to smooth away that crease, and it’s like that bit of contact is all they need, because the anger on Bucky’s face breaks and Clint can feel the hesitance within him fade in an instant. All that’s left in its wake is the twisting, oily feeling he gets for Bucky, which is terrifying but  _ exhilarating _ .

A little smile quirks up the corners of Bucky’s mouth and eyes. “You make me feel—” He pauses as he searches for the word. “You make me feel like you’re okay with knowing  _ all _ the parts of me, even the parts what Steve won’t look at or acknowledge. It’s like—if Steve has come to terms with me being experimented on, he ain’t okay with my Commie arm, because I like it and won’t get rid of it. He’s always telling me that Stark could fix me up, but I’m used to this now, you know? He sees it like it’s complacent to adjust to what they did.”

“It’s not,” Clint says fiercely. “It’s—it’s adaptation.” Surprised by his own vigor, he bursts into startled laughter, leaning back and looking hopelessly away from Bucky. “Christ, I’m a damned sap. I’m going to hell, and you’re my ticket there, Barnes. Natasha’s gonna be so proud.”

“You and her—” Bucky begins, pausing. “You’re a set, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s one of the reasons I don’t really date,” Clint says. He pauses for effect and then tips Bucky a wink. “Being a world-class assassin and behind Earth’s greatest heroes doesn’t help much, either.”

Bucky doesn’t reply for a minute. He shifts so he’s looking out the window, past Clint’s shoulder, unblinking. When he brings his eyes back to meet Clint’s again, the hardness has returned to his face and that wash of anger has squared his jaw again. Clint is suddenly reminded of how deadly this man before him is. There’s no part of Bucky that’s soft, not really; he’s only ever vulnerable if he’s got it perfectly calculated how to do it with minimal risk. Watching him shift from tender and gentle and  _ sweet _ to shrewd in an instant doesn’t nothing but remind Clint that Bucky is only barely on this side of murderous (and capable) in any moment.

“I don’t need you, Barton. Maybe I need what you give, but I know Natasha could, and probably would, take my crimes the same way,” Bucky says like he’s reading a jury’s verdict. “I won’t tell you I’m not feeling fucked in the head ‘bout all this. It wasn’t okay for me to want a man before, so I just—I told myself it wasn’t the same want that I got for a set of tits, that it was respect or whatever. I told myself that committing carnal sins, finding myself a sweet little fairy to hide in an alley with, was just easy. Just easy—nothing to do with preference.”

For all of this, Bucky is making direct eye contact with Clint, as if daring Clint to flinch or be disgusted. There’s just about no chance of that happening, but Clint gets that none of this is easy for Bucky to talk about. He didn’t grow up in the eighties like Clint ( _ A Chorus Line _ was one of the first movies Clint really remembers watching with a few of the other kids from the circus, and it had put a lot of things in context for him. It had also led to him, very briefly, wanting to be a dancer) and has likely never said any of this aloud before.

“Keep going,” Clint prompts when Bucky’s pause grows.

“I want—I want to be…  _ with _ you. I want to be with you, too,” he finally says. “I need to pain and I need the forgiveness, but sometimes, after, I would have liked to have—I don’t know—been held.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “We all need that sometimes, man.”

They lapse into easy silence after that. Bucky seems content with Clint’s reaction and doesn’t prod any further, and Clint’s mind is so busy in his head that he’s perfectly happy to sit and watch the end of the episode playing onscreen.

It’s all sort of overwhelming, but at some point they end up on the same couch and Bucky tucks the bulk of Clint up under his arm. They probably look ridiculous—Clint isn’t exactly a small guy—but Clint gives not a single shit because he’s all warm and fuzzy inside like a damned sap. There’s also a maybe too excited part of him that’s already thinking of the next time Bucky will come and give Clint the reins. He knows that there are other boundaries he can probably push now, new things he can use against the guilt behind Bucky’s eyes, and that thought sends a thrill through him.

##  Act III Scene IV

Somehow, they don’t get any time together before Clint is shipping off to Bahrain. Maybe that’s on purpose, but Clint gets so much work done at the place in Bed-Stuy and around the tower that he’s able to ignore how rude it is to avoid Bucky like this. The mission does end up getting moved forward, and so it’s boots on the ground almost a week sooner than expected.

To Phil’s credit, the operation is elementary: SHIELD has already done all the recon and infil, so Clint only has to drop the target with no casualties. Sure, it’s three days of roof-sitting in the wrathful Bahraini sun, but he’s allowed to talk to Phil or whomever else in the meantime. After all that, Clint manages one of the most perfect shots, straight between the eyes, and his hands don’t even tremble as he packs up his kit.

“Good job, Agent Barton,” comes Phil’s calm voice over the mission-wide comms. Really, it’s just the two of them and whoever is on from the local post—the name Maalouf is in Clint’s head, so maybe that’s the agent’s name—but it’s still somewhat comforting when Phil switches to the private line before continuing. “Are you alright, Clint?”

“Jesus, sir,” Clint laughs. The grip of his gun is comforting in his hands, but he wishes it was a bow. So much tidier, and somehow more honest. “We’re really blurring the personal-professional lines today, aren’t we?”

“Natasha told me you didn’t take the news well.”

“Well, that ain’t a lie. I’m good now, though. Promise,” Clint says. He’s quietly relieved to have Phil’s presence on comms, and the concern warms his heart even more.

Somehow, he and Phil and the whole local team (Maalouf, and three other agents, all men) end up at a bar-restaurant in Riffa that night while waiting on a delayed exfil. Clint has a few and is feeling very warm and fuzzy when his phone goes off. He mumbles something to Phil before pushing his way through the pulsing crowd to the warm, damp air outside. By the time he makes it through the people and out the door, the buzzing has stopped, but a jolt runs through him when he sees the missed call notification.

He dials back, and Bucky answers on the first ring.

“Barton,” he says. His tone is no more clipped than usual, but Clint gets immediately that something is off.

“Barnes,” Clint replies, keeping his tone easy with some effort. “It’s like, what, one in the afternoon there? What’s eating you?”

“12:15. You’re off by an hour,” Bucky says.

Clint sighs through his nose. “Cool, great, I’m off. So are you. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or, like, do not that?”

“I was thinking I’d open a multi-way conference call with the team so I could make nasty plans behind your back, but that works too.”

Clint is silent for a second, brain spinning somewhat slower than usual from wine intake. “Are you—you just  _ Mean Girls _ ed me, didn’t you, you shit, I swear—whatever. Whatever. Are you okay?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything at first, but his exhale is shaky, which Clint takes as a good sign. Showing emotion or weakness or whatever seems like a tough deal for Bucky, and Clint knows he could be just as silent and calculated as an arrow in the night if he wanted. “I’m fine.”

“Wait, are you calling because you miss me? Like, just to talk?” Clint is a little stricken—somehow Bucky admitting that he doesn’t just like Clint, but  _ like _ -like him still hasn’t sunken in.

“Uh, yes? You’re gone a lot, and I got used to you being around.” Barnes voice is losing momentum as he speaks. He sounds precisely like he’s expecting horrible news of some sort, which is to say hardly any different from normal, but Clint notices. “Steve and Tony were away today looking at the new facility, and Natalia’s been gone for a few days. I just thought—whatever.”

“No, no,” Clint hurries to respond. “Keep going. I, uh, like hearing from you. You know I want to be with you, too, right? Like that wasn’t… that wasn’t just a you thing. I’m about it too, man.”

Bucky laughs suddenly. His voice sounds surprised afterwards, like he hadn’t factored laughter into his operational protocol. “I just thought that I might call you. That’s what fellas do now, yeah? When they’re—when they’re  _ about it _ ?”

“Christ,” and it’s Clint’s turn to laugh now. “I know you watch more reality TV than the average New Jersey housewife and you consume tabloids at a terrifying rate, so don’t—don’t play like you’re some twentieth century gentleman.”

Phil interrupts them some time later to say the crew is turning in for the night but that transport should arrive at the nearest airfield in two hours. He doesn’t ask who Clint is talking to, but he does quirk an eyebrow up. For Phil, that’s as good as a grand jury indictment: he knows.

“Look, Barnes,” Clint says when his handler returns to pay the check inside. “Uh, I’ve gotta go. We’re all turning in, but I’ll be home by… fucking time zones. Uh, I’ll be home in, like, ten hours, if it’s a quinjet. If not, just pray for me.”

“James,” Bucky says suddenly. “You can call me James, or Bucky.” Neither of them speak for a second, and then Bucky—James? Definitely James.—says, “Bye,” and hangs up.

Clint stares at his phone for a moment before following Phil inside to get his jacket. If he were a touch more delusional, he’d blame the prickling across his cheeks and down his shoulders on the heat or the alcohol or an allergic reaction to the local flora, but he’s only sort of delusional, so he tells himself that this could work.


	5. Intermission II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s right about then, with Bucky’s hand on his dick and mouth wet and hot beneath his ear, Clint suddenly realizes that the situation is much more on equal ground, that Bucky has slipped out of that mindset of needing punishment. Clint decides that’s probably a good thing: their first sexual encounter being on equal standing, more or less, seems like not a bad idea. Besides, if the noises he’s making are anything to go by, Bucky is clearly enjoying being in the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh mind the updated rating/tags! this isn't too terribly plot-relevant so if you're not into porn, you can just skip this and it won't hinder your understanding of the rest of the work. this also is unbetaed, so pardon any weirdness; i've been hemming and hawing about this chapter for like three goddamn weeks and i was gonna go shithive maggots if it didn't get posted.< /br>  
> i'd also like to apologize for the unannounced break. my life has seriously exploded in a multitude of ways because of summer, but i'll do my best to get the remaining two chapters up in a timely fashion. they're both half-written, so theoretically, that should be doable. much love to yall for reading!  
> edit: (21 july 17) also i finally updated the fucking summary. tags still suck so i'll try making those more better later  
> edit: (17 august 17) just wanted to say i'm still working on it. this fic is definitely not abandoned

## Intermission II

They don’t actually have a discussion where they sit down and ask one another “what _are_ we” because that’s cheesy and for saps, both of which are things they ain’t. When Clint gets back to the tower after that mission, he just goes to Bucky’s suite and they watch _Top Gun_ until dawn while holding hands. They start to do that a lot after that first night—just exist in the same space and share a few cigarettes and watch something. It’s really fucking domestic, honestly, but Clint isn’t one of the members of the team who has got issues with domesticity. (Or, rather, his issues with domesticity swing towards the opposite end of the spectrum—Clint craves casual tenderness like nothing else; Tony sometimes wears the suit to dinner so no one will touch him.)

They make out like teenagers on the couch a few times, too, which is. Fuck, dude, it _sure_ is.

Twice more over the course of the next week, Clint forces Bucky to his knees and brings confessions and apologies out of him. Slowly, it becomes… easier. Where it was a big production before, it now feels comfortable, if no less intense.

Somewhere along the way, Clint gets to feeling less like he’s taking something away from Bucky, and more like he’s giving something; he starts to _get_ something out of it, too. It’s a nebulous feeling of appreciation and being needed, but it’s something, and it’s a really nice something.

The first time Clint tries for—for something _beyond_ that usual affair, Bucky’s mood is ruined completely by Clint asking if he's okay. He sourly tells Clint that this is much more of a gallows and much less of a therapist’s couch, which is so poetic and also so bitchy that Clint’s heart stutters. So they end up doing a _Bojack Horseman_ marathon instead. Which, like, Clint’s not complaining; at this point he’s rewatched _Bojack_ no less than six times in its entirety—some episodes he’s probably seen upwards of twenty, but who’s counting?

The problem isn’t the outcome, it’s _why._ Not asking if Bucky’s okay goes against everything that Clint has ever learned about sex. Clint has had more than his fair share of weird traumatizing sex Incidents—capital I—that he’s deeply in his head about forcing things on Bucky. Dr. Stewart would probably say that this was a trigger and that being cautious is responsible, but Bucky isn’t into that, and Clint isn’t into not screwing Bucky, so.

In the end, after a long string of uncomfortable cold showers, he figures Bucky could probably fuck him directly up if it came to it, and most of the power exchange is symbolic. Besides, he gave Bucky a safeword during their first scene, so to speak, and Clint knows damn well that Bucky wouldn’t have forgotten it.

So Clint doesn't let himself fuck up by being compassionate the second time around, and it goes a lot better.

“A lot of them didn’t fight back,” Bucky is saying. Clint's got him with his hands up against the wall in his suite at shoulder level, palms facing out. Already, Bucky is panting beneath Clint, and he’s still fully clothed and barely touched. “A lot of the targets knew that Hydra would be coming for them sooner or later. Some—some would apologize to me. I killed those ones the dirtiest. Can’t suffer a fool to live, and if you want forgiveness from the fucking Fist of Hydra, you’re a damn fool.”

Clint presses his thigh up between Bucky’s and gets his thumb in the other man’s shoulder seam, drawing a shaky breath out of him. “Are you sorry?” he says, and Bucky grins at him. “Don’t be fucking coy. Are you sorry? You don’t sound very sorry.”

Clint knows it won’t actually get an answer out of Bucky, not this early in the game, but it still would feel wrong to punish the guy without a reason. The grin doesn’t budge from Bucky’s face.

“I asked you a question, Barnes,” Clint says, more as a warning than any real attempt to get an answer. He slips his free hand up around Bucky’s throat and presses down on the jugular until his brow is furrowed and his mouth hangs slack. Clint lands a searing kiss on Bucky’s lips then, too. It’s ninety percent teeth and would probably make romance turn and run in the other direction, but it sends the most delicious sparks jumping down Clint’s spine to rest below his stomach.

Clint finally releases Bucky’s throat, and the man is gasping beneath him, which is— _so_ delightful. Against his thigh, he can feel the bulge of Bucky’s cock growing, and he grinds up into it hard enough to earn a growl and a bite.

“I wanna be sorry,” Bucky whispers. The fire in his eyes isn’t any dimmer, so Clint grabs his chin. His fingers dig into the soft flesh beneath his jaw, and he’s sure to use a little more fingernail than is strictly necessary.

“Make me believe it, Barnes,” and Clint feels Bucky’s panting spill out of him more than he hears it. “That’s a good start,” he breathes. Clint can feel where the red flush of sex and want has spilled across his cheeks, shoulders, fading down his chest, and its twin is in the heat rising in Bucky’s face as well.

Bucky keeps talking through the kisses Clint lands on him, only faltering when Clint bites down on flesh and tendon. “They didn’t always totally wipe me, and I was—moodier then. Fought back more, and I’d kill more innocents, but only the— _fuck!_ —the handlers gave a shit who I killed. And no one gave a shit if I killed the handlers, so I would, and fucking—the higher ups jus’ about rewarded me for it. They’d say how good and ruthless I was.”

Clint leans back to land a stinging slap on Bucky’s cheek. It snaps his head to the side, and the rise and fall of his chest stutters. Clint knows it’s not a _bad_ stutter, though, because he can feel where Bucky’s cock twitches against his thigh.

“You don’t kill innocents now, do you?” When Bucky doesn’t answer, Clint grabs Bucky’s groin through his pants and _squeezes_ until the guy is up on his tiptoes, whining with his eyebrows canted up. His hands don’t move, and Clint strokes a wrist with his free hand.

“Fuck, no, no, fuck! No—hah, no innocents, no,” Bucky wails. Clint lets go, can immediately see where tears are welling up in Bucky’s eyes. That’s a good sign—it means he’s close to breaking, close to forgiving himself a little. Clint figured out early on that Bucky _always_ feels sorry and guilty for the things he had done; he just sometimes feels even guiltier daring to ask for forgiveness.

Bucky starts apologizing in earnest, mumbling “I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry” as he kisses all up and down Clint’s neck. Clint groans with it, and lets himself sink into the washes of sensation. Clint realizes after some time of this that Bucky’s still got his hands up by his shoulders.

“You can move your hands, James,” Clint murmurs into Bucky’s temple. Bucky shakes his head without looking up from where he’s getting mighty intimate with Clint’s collarbone, so Clint shrugs and lets it go.

After a few minutes of necking, in the most literal sense, Clint can tell it’s not enough for Bucky, but he doesn’t say anything. The Winter Soldier is squirming in front of him, trying to leverage himself down on Clint’s thigh to get a good angle for rubbing himself off, but he’s taller than Clint by just enough to make the angle of it awkward.

“Barton, god,” Bucky whispers into the soft spot just behind Clint’s ear. That’s enough to send a full tremor down Clint’s spine, which Bucky has to notice because suddenly he’s pressing his teeth and slipping his tongue across it.

“Christ,” Clint breathes. His arms are all over Bucky—slipping across the firmness of his chest, over the ridges and valleys of his obliques into his abs, around to grab his (sweet, beautiful, _tempting_ ) ass. Bucky twists into and away from every movement, juddering in Clint’s arm like an engine fit to burst from how sensitive he is and how it’s nowhere near enough.

Clint tangles a hand up in Bucky’s hair, yanking _hard_ to pull his head back so he can get at the other man’s throat, too. He tastes like salt and soap, and his jaw is scratchy with stubble against Clint’s cheek. When Bucky tries to jerk out of Clint’s grip, Clint pulls his hair harder until Bucky is aimlessly begging and twisting against Clint’s mouth.

“You know,” Clint says, nearly conversational but for how he’s panting. “You know, if you just asked, I’d—god, babe—I’d give you whatever. Whatever it is you want.”

Bucky looks down his nose from where Clint’s got his head pulled back, all lazy desperate lust. Clint knows he’s eyeing up the marks and bites and bruises all coming into color all over Clint’s shoulders, and _fuck_ , Bucky could be on the cover of some filthy rag like this, could be some porno mag boy. His lips are red and wet, and his chin and upper lip nearly glow from being damp and roughed by Clint's stubble. His eyes are just as wet: unspilled tears, and a bit of shine beneath that hints at spilled ones, too.

“ _Fuck me_ ,” he says. It would sound just like Cap giving an order over mission comms, all authoritative supersoldier know-how, except for the part where his voice is so rough and shaky. Clint wishes vaguely that he could record it to feature in his jerking off fantasies for the next year, but he’s sure his memory will provide adequate playback.

He snaps himself out of his wandering thoughts when Bucky presses his bottom lip between his teeth, which should be fucking _illegal._

“Jesus, babe—”

Bucky cuts him off. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Because,” and this is not a conversation that Clint is prepared for. “Because you’re—fuck, this is not a great time for this. I’ll quit, and tell you later, okay?”

“I—I like it,” Bucky says, again with that hesitance that Clint is beginning to realize isn’t uncharacteristic but is just some forgotten vestige of the boy he used to be. “You can keep at it. If you want.”

Clint groans, hanging his head forward to rest on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky’s hands finally come down to pull Clint’s head to him, and their hips are working to press them closer until they’re one long line from shoulder to thigh. “You have,” Clint says between kisses and bites, wet slides of tongue and lip against the seam of Bucky’s shoulder. “You have no idea what that does for me, baby, do you? You letting yourself be somethin’ for me. Be something _weak_ and tender for me.”

“Yes,” Bucky breathes, _moans._ He twists his flesh arm down to fiddle with the knot in the waistband of the sweats Clint is wearing, and Clint peels himself away for long enough to return the favor, getting the button and fly of Bucky’s jeans undone.

“God,” Clint laughs. “I can’t believe you’ve spent, like, a year in the twenty-first century and you’re wearing distressed jeans like some Robocop-ie and Fitch model, like, fucking, some award winning motherfucker, Gold Derby or whatever.”

Bucky doesn’t bother to tell Clint he’s making no sense. He just pulls down the archer’s sweats (no underwear, because he’s a baller—literally and metaphorically, in this moment) and gets a hand around Clint’s fat cock, which shuts him up much better. His grip is firm, and he swipes his thumb over Clint’s cockhead to smear the bit of pre that’s gathered at the slit.

Clint’s hands falter where they’re tugging Bucky’s jeans down, but then he gets back to it with renewed vigor. He fists Bucky’s dick through the fabric, earning an aborted stutter of the hips, and rubs his thumb over the damn spot Bucky’s cockhead has made. Bucky does that thing again where he moans low and long, that thing that Clint is an _absolute_ sucker for, and watches unsubtly as Clint’s eyebrows tilt up and his mouth falls a bit open.

It’s right about then, with Bucky’s hand on his dick and mouth wet and hot beneath his ear, Clint suddenly realizes that the situation is much more on equal ground, that Bucky has slipped out of that mindset of needing punishment. Clint decides that’s probably a good thing: their first sexual encounter being on equal standing, more or less, seems like not a bad idea. Besides, if the noises he’s making are anything to go by, Bucky is clearly enjoying being in the moment.

Finally—Bucky makes it clear that it’s taken Clint too long with some well-placed bites—Clint fumbles Bucky’s cock out of his boxer briefs. The living steel of it is hot and heavy and uncut in Clint’s hand, and he leans forward to catch Bucky’s lips in a quick kiss before spitting in his hand.

“That’s less than graceful,” Bucky says, but it’s ruined by the breathless air of his voice.

“Your ass is less than graceful,” Clint says right back. “Now move your big lunk hand so I can do this proper.”

Bucky obliges, and Clint gets one forearm against the wall to stabilize himself as he takes both their shafts in his hand and begins a nearly tortuously slow rhythm. Bucky groans and leans his head on Clint’s shoulder so he can watch.

And that’s the thing: it’s not that it feels great—although it certainly fucking does, the slide of callused hand and Bucky’s soft skin against him—but the sight is so deliciously obscene that Clint’s breath catches in his throat. Bucky’s got maybe an inch on Clint, which isn’t too surprising because fucking supersoldiers, but for all it’s a long and pretty dick, it obscenely blurts pre every few strokes, oozing between their cocks and onto Clint’s hand before getting worked into the mess. It’s just—

“So fucking _wet_ , James, just look at that,” Clint says. It draws a low groan out of Bucky, who looks like he wants to look away but _can’t._ “Like a fucking girl, dripping for me, yeah?”

“Barton,” he murmurs, and, “God, your _hands._ ”

“Babe, if I can call you James, you can call me Clint,” he manages, accenting his words with a twist of his hand that’s got Bucky arching against him, knocking his head back into the wall. Clint chuckles breathlessly, “Don’t concuss yourself.”

For all his talk, Clint can feel himself getting close: the tightening of his muscles, a minute tremble in his thighs. He wishes he could hold off, but it’s been _ages_ and all he can think of is the shiny red of Bucky’s bitten lips and the way he keeps passing his metal hand over a nipple, gasping at the contact. Bucky is so noisy, so enthusiastic; he’s miles more into it than Clint expected, but that is _so fucking okay._

“Clint, Clint, please,” Bucky is saying, voice husky and nearly wrecked. He leans forward again and gets his mouth on that spot just beneath Clint’s ear, groaning wetly when Clint twists his hand around their cocks and thumbs over the head of Bucky’s. Clint knows there’s going to be one hell of a bruise that can’t be covered just beneath his ear, but there’s not even a shred of him that cares, and thinking about being _marked_ is all it takes to push him over the knife’s edge of pleasure, hips juddering.

Bucky kisses him through it. Again, he’s all tender and comforting in a way Clint never would have expected the first time he saw those chipped ice eyes and the haunting black painted about them.

When he finally regains enough control to stop clinging to Bucky, Clint looks down at the mess between them, at the still-hard jut of Bucky’s cock, and licks his lips. Bucky laughs as filthy as you please at that, but his laugh is cut short when Clint raises his hand to suck his own cum off his fingers—Clint is pretty well into that, but the look Bucky gives him makes it even better—and then drops to his knees after tucking himself back into his sweats.

“You don’t have to—” Bucky starts, but Clint sucks a bruise into the crease of his thigh, which shuts him up mighty fucking quick. Above him, Clint can already feel the other man’s breathing quicken, and his cock twitches and dribbles precum to match. As soon as Clint’s tongue touches the head of Bucky’s cock, the taller man’s hands find their way to wind tightly in Clint’s hair. The metal one pinches a little, but the sharp points of pain are delectable, and Clint moans to show it.

“You’re so pretty, baby,” Clint murmurs just before licking a long line up Bucky’s shaft. “So wet for me,” he says again with his nose tucked into the thatch at the base of Bucky’s cock. That earns him a half-held back twist of the hips, and he grins up at Bucky. “You like when I say that? Tell you you’re _soaked_ , just like a girl? You like me pointing out how I get you?”

Bucky is so _responsive_ , groaning _yes_ es at Clint’s words and twisting his hands in Clint’s hair with every movement of Clint’s mouth on him. Clint tongues absently at the fat vein on the underside of Bucky’s cock as he slowly works his way further down, stretching his jaw open. The taste of Bucky spreads across his tongue, that wet salt-musk, and Clint groans at it. When he pulls back, he looks up to meet Bucky’s eyes, and god _damn._

Clint didn’t think the man could look any better, but here it is: his pupils all blown out, his hair pushed behind his ears with a few sweat-damp strands clinging to his face and neck, the muscles of his neck tight.

Clint gets one hand around to squeeze Bucky’s ass, keeping the other firm on his hip, as he works the man’s cock. Because he’s multitalented, a renaissance man, Clint occasionally bobs down to deepthroat Bucky which gets these choked-off noises and bits of pleas. Bucky isn’t far off from orgasm judging by his hands restlessly tugging Clint’s hair, thumbing over a nipple, pressing against the wall. Clint pulls off with a gross noise that makes Bucky breathlessly laugh, and there’s a thin filament of spit that hangs in the air for just a second.

“Hey, babe,” Clint says, and he knows his voice is hot as hell like this, deep and a little rough from deepthroating. “Wanna fuck my face?”

“What the fuck kinda question is that,” Bucky says rather than asks and for a second Clint thinks he’s somehow misjudged, that maybe none of this is really happening, but Bucky continues, “Of fucking course I do. God almighty.”

Clint grins.

He gets Bucky’s hands on the back and top of his head, his own neatly on his thighs. “You don’t need to worry about gagging me—no reflex, and I like it besides,” Clint says, glancing up at Bucky through his lashes. The man groans above him and gently pulls Clint’s face forward, getting one hand on his cock to guide it to rest against Clint’s parted lips.

“Open,” he murmurs, and Clint obliges, letting at first just Bucky’s cockhead into his mouth. It’s heavy on his tongue, and Clint _whines_ for what’s about to come. Bucky must take that as an invitation, because with no warning, he’s snapping his hips forward until Clint’s face is pressed to the thatch at the base of his cock. “Don’t worry about teeth,” he says, sounding miles more assertive. “I don’t mind a bit of pain.”

That’s all the respite Clint gets before Bucky takes up a punishing pace, hands firm on Clint. It’s more than a little brutal, and even more hot than that. Clint realizes suddenly, with Bucky’s cock down his throat and tears in his eyes, that making Bucky lose control might be a big fucking kink of his.

“You fucking slut,” Bucky murmurs, and then, “God, _Clint_ , can I—I’m gonna come—”

His voice is tight and Clint moans loudly around his cock, permission for—whatever, he guesses. Whatever Bucky wants. Bucky moans softly above him, thrusting a few more shallow time into Clint’s mouth. When Bucky pulls out and finishes all over Clint’s open mouth and face, it’s like some huge release for both of them, the completion of this monumental event.

“Fuck,” Clint says. “I need to—bathroom. Cum is hell if it dries in your hair. Do you, uh, need a shower? I guess your suite is just down a floor with Cap’s, isn’t it? If you wanted to go back.”

Bucky gives him a withering glance as he does up his fly. “Do you always word vomit when you’re nervous? I’d be mad, but it’s kind of cute as fuck.”

“There’s one for the press. I’ll the _The Enquirer_ that the Winter Soldier told me I’m cute, probably get thousands for it,” Clint snarks right back, gathering himself and wiping his face with the bottom of his shirt.

“Inquiring minds want to know: does Hawkeye sounds like a little bitch in bed?”


End file.
